Windows 7 Update breaks Chrome

Friday, November 13th, 2009 | #Tags: chrome, Windows 7

This might have went unnoticed by most users but I am now sure that a Windows update to IE8 breaks Chrome’s speed.

The Update rolled out by Microsoft to fix IE8 security rips apart Google Chrome performance. The update (MS09-054 / 974455) is supposed to fix two critical flaws in IE 8:

97694 The offsetTop calculation for elements that are contained as children of scrolled elements may be reported incorrectly in Windows Internet Explorer 8 976949 You receive a VBScript “Type Mismatch” script error message in Internet Explorer after you install cumulative security update 974455

But unfortunately, it effects all versions of chrome to behave unusually. Chrome becomes unresponsive, sluggish and slower by factor of 10x times (of the order of IE8). The KB articles detail out the fixing of the flaw related to VBScript and javascript, however it modifies Chrome’s Javascript execution engine.

The case was reported to Chrome development community and was brought to forum as well, where it was confirmed that the Update was the root cause. Uninstalling the Update, however, fixes Chrome again.

Was it Microsoft’s attempt to cripple Google’s Chrome business? Or Something that went un-noticed?