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Have you ever saved a password in your browser — Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or another one? Then your passwords are likely viewable by anyone with access to your computer while you’re logged in.

Chrome and Firefox’s developers think this is fine, as you should be preventing people from accessing your computer in the first place, but this will likely come as a surprise to many people.
How Anyone With Access To Your Computer Can View Your Passwords

Assuming you leave your computer logged in and someone else uses it, they can open Chrome’s Settings page, go to the Passwords section, and easily view every single password you have saved.

You can plug chrome://settings/passwords into Chrome’s address bar for easy access to this page. Click a password field and click the Show button — you can see any password saved in Chrome with no additional prompts.



With Firefox’s default settings, you can open its Options window, select the Security pane, and click the Saved Passwords button. Select Show Passwords and you can see a list of all the passwords saved in Firefox on your computer.

Firefox allows you to set a “master password” that must be entered before you can view or use saved passwords, but this is disabled by default and Firefox doesn’t prompt users to set one up.



Internet Explorer provides no built-in way to view its saved passwords. However, this apparent security is misleading. With a utility like the free IE PassView, you can view all saved IE passwords for the current user account. You can also view passwords without installing any software — just visit a website where the password is automatically filled and use something like the Reveal Passwords bookmarklet to reveal the password that was automatically entered.

What’s Going On Here? Is This a Security Vulnerability?

There has been a debate raging among geeks as to whether this is really a security vulnerability. Should Chrome’s developers (and the developers of other browsers, like Internet Explorer and even Firefox with its default settings) change this behavior? Have users been betrayed by developers, given that browsers don’t warn users about this behavior?

On the one hand, there are some good arguments for the current behavior.
Chrome and Internet Explorer both secure your saved passwords with your Windows user account password. If you’re not logged in, your passwords are inaccessible. If an attacker changes your Windows account password, your passwords become inaccessible. Assuming you use a strong Windows password and lock your computer when you aren’t using it, you’re theoretically secure.
If an attacker has physical access to your computer or a malicious program is running in the background, it could log your key strokes and gain any “master password” used to secure your passwords in Firefox or a dedicated password manager like LastPass. A master password in Chrome would provide a false sense of security.

If you are regularly seeing the “Whoa! Google Chrome has crashed” message, there is likely a problem on your system. An occasional crash can happen, but regular crashes are probably caused by something you can fix.

If you are curious just how often Chrome is crashing, you can type chrome://crashes into your location bar and press Enter to view a list of crashes and when they occurred. This is just one of Chrome’s many hidden chrome:// pages.

Check For Conflicting Software

Some software on your computer can conflict with Google Chrome and cause it to crash. This includes malware and network-related software that interferes with Google Chrome.

Google Chrome has a hidden page that will tell you if any software on your system is known to conflict with Google Chrome. To access it, type chrome://conflicts into Chrome’s address bar and press Enter.



You can also check the Software that crashes Google Chrome page on Google’s website for a list of software that causes Chrome to crash. The page includes instructions for solving conflicts with some conflicting software.

If you have conflicting software on your system, you should update it to the latest version, disable it, or uninstall it. If you are not sure which software a module is related to, try Googling the name of the library.
Scan for Malware

Malware can also interfere with Google Chrome and cause it to crash. If you are encountering regular crashes, you should scan your computer with antivirus software like Microsoft Security Essentials. If you already have antivirus software installed, you may want to get a second opinion from another antivirus program.

Solve Flash Crashes

We have found that the Flash plugin Chrome includes can cause it to crash in some cases. If you are seeing regular Shockwave Flash crashes, you may want to try disabling the internal Flash plugin and using the standard Flash plugin in Google Chrome.

Switch to a New Profile

Chrome crashes may be caused by a corrupted profile. You can test this by creating a new profile from Chrome’s Settings screen. Open the Settings page from Chrome’s menu and click Add new user under Users.

Change to the new profile after creating it and see if the crashes continue to occur. You can sign into Chrome with your Google account to sync the data from your old profile. However, Google recommends you don’t copy any files from the old profile folder by hand – they may be corrupted and causing the problem.

Fix System File Problems

Google recommends running the SFC.EXE /SCANNOW program to check for – and fix – problems with protected system files on your Windows system if you are encountering crashes. To do this, locate the Command Prompt in your Start menu (press the Windows key and type Command Prompt), right-click it, and select Run as Administrator.



Type the following command in the Command Prompt window and press Enter:

SFC.EXE /SCANNOW

Windows will scan your computer for problems with system files sand fix any problems it finds.



Hardware issues can also cause Chrome crashes. You may want to test your computer’s RAM and ensure it isn’t faulty.

PC gaming isn’t quite as simple as console gaming. If you have a laptop with weak graphics hardware or an older PC, it’s important to check whether your computer can support a game before you spend your hard-earned cash.

Gamers don’t have to upgrade their hardware as often as they used to. Even a gaming PC built years ago should be able to handle the newest games just fine. Laptops not build for gaming and older PCs are a different matter.

Beware Intel Graphics

First, one big warning: If your computer uses onboard Intel graphics instead of dedicated NVIDIA or AMD graphics hardware, you’ll likely experience issues running newer, graphically demanding games.

Most laptops include Intel on-board graphics, which is cheaper and doesn’t use as much power. However, even the latest Intel graphics hardware is much slower than NVIDIA or AMD graphics. If you only have Intel graphics, you may not even be able to play the newest games on the lowest graphics settings.

Intel’s onboard graphics performance has improved with Intel’s new Haswell graphics, but it hasn’t improved nearly enough. All but the most extremely expensive Haswell chips offer only moderate improvements over the previous generation.

Check Your PC’s Specifications Manually

We’ll cover a more automatic method later on, but first we’ll look at the manual method. You’ll need to know the hardware in your computer — primarily its CPU speed, amount of RAM, and graphics card details. You can find this information in a variety of different ways, including looking up your laptop’s specifications online.

However, it would be easiest to use a system information tool for this. We recommend Speccy, made by the same company that makes the excellent CCleaner.

Here are the main three things you need to care about:
The CPU’s speed, in GHz. Click the CPU header in Speccy and you’ll be able to see the number of cores your CPU has, too.
The amount of RAM your computer has, in GB.
The model of your computer’s graphics card and the amount of RAM the graphics card has on-board. Also note whether you have NVIDIA or AMD graphics. If you see both Intel and NVIDIA or AMD, that’s fine — your computer has both and switches between the two to save power.



Next, look up the system requirements for the game you want to run. You’ll generally find this information on the game’s website or on the site for whatever store is selling it. It’s at the bottom of each game’s page on the Steam store, for example.

Compare the information shown in Speccy to the details below. Pay particular attention to the processor, memory, and video card requirements.

Once you can remember the basic hardware your computer contains, checking system requirements is as simple as glancing at them and comparing from memory.


Automatically Compare Your PC’s Specifications to a Game

Let’s be honest: this process is inconvenient. Computers should be able to do all of this for us.

To check system requirements automatically, use the Can You Run It? website. This website is endorsed by a variety of big companies, including AMD.

Before using this website, we recommend running the System Requirements Lab Detection desktop app. Install this app and it will scan your computer’s hardware before sending you back to the website, setting a special cookie that identifies your hardware. This way you won’t have to install any Java or any ActiveX applets.



After running the tool, just visit the website, select the game you want to run from the dropdown box, and click the Can You Run It button.



You’ll be informed how well the game will run on your current hardware. You can check as many games as you like in the future — but if you clear your cookies, you’ll have to run the detection tool again.



But can it run Crysis? Well, that depends on your hardware — with these tools, you’ll be able to figure out the answer!

Have you noticed your usually speedy Google Chrome browser slowing down, or even crashing on you? Unnecessary plugins, extensions, and even browsing data can slow your browser down to a crawl, or make it crash. Here’s how to fix it.

In this article, we’ll show you how to disable plugins and extensions and clear browsing data to speed up Chrome and prevent it from crashing on you.

Disable Plugins

By default, when you install Google Chrome, many unnecessary plugins are installed and enabled. Plugins help Chrome process special types of content, such as Flash, Java, Silverlight, or Windows Media files, but most of them aren’t even important to your daily browsing. Plugins can slow down the performance of Chrome, but you can disable plugins you are not using. To do this, type “about:plugins” (without the quotes) in the address bar of Chrome and press Enter.

NOTE: You can safely disable every single plugin, but you may want to keep Flash enabled, as a lot of sites use Flash to display menus, show videos, etc. Also, if you watch Netflix in Chrome, you need to keep the Silverlight plugin enabled. You can always enable a plugin again if you need to.



A list of installed plugins displays on the current tab. Scroll through the list and click the Disable link for each plugin you feel you don’t need.

NOTE: Plugins cannot be deleted or uninstalled, only disabled. An exception would be a plugin that was installed as part of an extension and you uninstall the extension. Then, the plugin is automatically removed.



Disabled plugins turn gray in the list, and the Disable link for each disabled plugin becomes an Enable link, allowing you to enable the plugin again, if desired.

Disable Extensions

Extensions are small programs available in the Chrome Web Store that add extra features and functionality to Chrome. They can be very useful, but if you end up with a lot of extensions installed, the browser’s speed may be negatively affected. You can easily disable extensions without uninstalling them to gain some speed. Some extensions install a button on Chrome’s address bar, and those can be quickly disabled by right-clicking on them and choosing Uninstall from the menu.



You can also install apps in Chrome, that are accessible on the New Tab page. These can also be disabled.



To access your list of installed extensions and apps, click the wrench icon on the toolbar and select Tools -> Extensions from the drop-down menu. You can uninstall extensions with buttons without accessing this list, but you might be surprised that some extensions are in the list that don’t have a button.



To disable an extension, click the Enabled check box to the right of the extension’s title in the list so there is no check mark in the box.



The Enabled check box becomes an Enable check box, allowing you to re-enable the extension at any time.

NOTE: You can also easily remove any extensions or apps you don’t want anymore by clicking the trash can icon to the right of the Enabled check box.



Notice that there are a lot less extensions on our toolbar now.

Clear Browsing Data

As you browse the web, Chrome’s history database collects URLs and cached texts for websites you’ve visited, your download history, cookies, and other website and plugin data. While the point of the history and cache database are to speed up your computer by caching things locally instead of having to download every time, sometimes the history database can become very large and may slow down Chrome.

NOTE: You shouldn’t clear your history regularly for speed purposes, as that defeats the purpose of a local cache. You can certainly clear it for privacy reasons though.

There are several ways to clear your browsing history, including clearing your entire history and clearing the history for specific sites.
Clear Your Entire Browsing History

To clear your entire browsing history, click the wrench icon on the toolbar and select Tools -> Clear browsing data from the drop-down menu.

NOTE: Clearing your entire browsing history prevents matches from displaying when you start typing URLs in the address bar.



In the Clear browsing data dialog, select the items you want to clear and select a time range from the drop-down list. Click Clear browsing data to clear the selected data.



When the Clear browsing data dialog closes, the Settings tab opens. To close it, click the red X button on the tab.

Clear Specific Items from Your Browsing History

If you want to delete the history for only specific webpages, click the wrench icon on the toolbar and select History from the drop-down menu.



Move your mouse over a webpage you want to remove from the history list and select the check box that displays. Once you have selected all the webpages you want to remove, click Remove selected items.



A confirmation dialog box displays. Click OK if you are sure you want to remove the webpages from the history list.



To close the History tab, click the red X button on the tab.


Clear Your Browsing History from the New Tab Page

The New Tab page displays thumbnails for the websites you visit most. You can clear your browsing history by removing these thumbnails from the New Tab page.

To remove a webpage from the New Tab page, move your mouse over the thumbnail for the site and click the X that displays in the upper, right corner of the thumbnail.

NOTE: You can reset the New Tab page to blank thumbnails by clearing your entire browsing history, as mentioned earlier.



You can also remove a thumbnail from the New Tab page, by dragging it to the Remove from Chrome trash can, which only displays once you start dragging a thumbnail.


Clear Your Browsing History Automatically when Chrome Exits

Earlier in this article, we recommended disabling extensions you don’t use to speed up Chrome. However, there is one extension that might be useful. The Click&Clean extension allows you to clear browsing data automatically when you close Chrome.

To install Click&Clean, click the link above and then click the Add to Chrome button on the webpage for the extension.



A confirmation dialog box displays to make sure you want to install the extension. It also tells you what the extension can access. Click Add to continue with the installation.



Once Click&Clean has been installed, a notification displays, pointing to the new button on the Chrome toolbar.



When you click the Click&Clean button, the Main menu displays. There are many tools available in this extension for maintaining Chrome and your computer. The gray buttons in the middle of the menu provide access to more tools.

To configure Click&Clean to clear browsing data when Chrome exits, click the Options button on the Main menu.



To select which types of browsing data to clear when you close Chrome, click the Clear Private Data when Browser Closes tab on the left. Click the plus sign to the left of Chrome in the list on the right. Check the items you want automatically cleared when you close Chrome.

For more information about the options available in Click&Clean, see the Help webpage.



Happy speedy browsing!