Modern Windows - Edge stuck on "One moment..."

[jesusbuiltmycar]

Confession - I am a developer and prefer Unix based operating systems, ever since I started developing on them in the 1990s... Over the years most of my work has been Linux based, but often using a clients Windows Laptop to either cross-compile or remote login to a server. I am now rapidly becoming a grumpy old man and hate all things Windows.


That said, my current client has provided me with a very high end Dell laptop (Core i7, 32Gb ram, etc), - I checked the price and it is more expense than most Macbooks. As a piece of hardware it is very good quality, it even has a touch screen (honestly cant see the point but gimmicks are gimmicks).

I have been using it for 4 weeks and cannot believe how bad the Windows experience is - it is dog slow (opening a file from a command line takes a while), requires rebooting pretty much every day and yesterday it crashed completely in the middle of a Teams call - dropped straight to a blue screen with a countdown and as a bonus put the speakers on full volume while making an obnoxious humming noise as it counted backwards from 60 while ignoring any key presses..

Today has bought a new issue. Whenever I try do do anything in Edge a white box pops up with "One Moment..." and circling dots. This makes the browser unusable. The dialog looks similar to a Teams login (without anyway to enter a password).

A Google search has suggested trying a different browser (not possible due to internal IT policies) or re-installing Windows.

Any suggestions? I know "re-install Windows" was a weekly part of a developer life back in the days of Windows 95/98 etc., but in 2023 is "re-install Windows" the only way to fix what would be a minor issue on a real OS?

[xeny]

Find the edge preferences directory in appdata and delete it?

[wyson]

Did they install performance monitoring software aka spyware on it? Uninstall that first if you have admin rights?

Also spec doesn’t matter if they have ancient driver packs etc that they never update. You will see plenty of spaz outs and BSOD’s. Maybe update those if you have permissions?

My firms high power Windows laptops are barely useable because of both the above issues. I spent half a day with a colleague analysing them and found we didn’t have permissions to get rid nor update the basic load.

My much lower spec personal laptop, with updated drivers and a normal Windows install runs rings around it for general use and is a lot more stable.

Edited by wyson on Friday 29th September 20:23

[xeny]

wyson said:

My firms high power Windows laptops are barely useable because of both the above issues. I spent half a day with a colleague analysing them and found we didn’t have permissions to get rid nor update the basic load.

My much lower spec personal laptop, with updated drivers and a normal Windows install runs rings around it for general use and is a lot more stable.

This is despair inducingly common :-( . For added comedy, I reported a security vulnerability in some of the management software and it still hasn't been updated :-/

[Whoozit]

This may be wildly off the mark. I bought a Dell desktop a couple of years ago for the Whoozette's main PC. It was dog slow exactly as you describe. Task Manager showed endless cycles of writing to disk.

I eventually bought a new SSD, mirrored the existing drive and replaced. Voila.

No idea if it was a hardware issue, a Dell bloatware issue, or what. And I realise yours being a customer laptop you can't try such a drastic change.

[the-norseman]

I'd be putting a USB in the system with Debian on it and wiping Windows.

Unfortunately my work machine is also a Windows 10 machine, I have the exact same machine running Debian as well, the work machine is slow and the fans are always on.

The other thing that annoys me about the work Windows machine is Microsoft edge forcing updates every other day, got a message up now Edge will restart in 6 hours. Tried to disable it but the IT department has greyed the option out.

Edited by the-norseman on Saturday 30th September 09:39

[jesusbuiltmycar]

Thanks for the tips - I managed to solve it ... after several reboots. I believe the solution was to sign out of Teams & Outlook, shutdown/restart, then sign into Teams before opening Edge. For some reason if Teams remebered the sign in from the previous boot it caused Edge to do the "One Moment...". Quite why the browser needs a sign in to work is ridiculous - I can only assume it is to do targetted advertising which is now a big part of Microsofts business model (there is a YouTube video showing how many data brokers a clean install of Windows connects to out of the box).

Re speed and the mention of Debian above ... if only!

We have a desktop machine (Core i9, 64GB ram etc.) which was being used to run a GITEA server on Windows and it was dog slow - the browser page would take minutes to switch branches. This week I installed the GITEA on a VM hosted by the same Windows Machine and it is instantaneous - WTF is Windows doing?

[wyson]

On my firms’ machines, the browser is managed by the company and also needs a login. I think it’s something to do with zScaler so they can track what you browse and block websites against company policy. Facebook for instance is off limits on my company browser.

You are a lucky soul if this is the first time in your dev career you’ve come across a machine managed mangled by a corp.

Edited by wyson on Saturday 30th September 11:46