Chromebook Diagnostics – Testing Chromebook CPU, Memory, Network Connectivity

If your device is slow to load webpages, applications or other uses, please check your device’s performance to pinpoint the issue. 
The 3 main items that would cause this issue are CPU overloaded, Memory (RAM) overloaded, or Network connectivity issues.
These can be checked from the ‘Diagnostics’ app right on a Chromebook.

Open the Diagnostics App

You can also open the app using the keyboard shortcut:
Press Ctrl + Search (magnifying glass or circle dot icon) + Esc simultaneously.
  • Click the launcher in the bottom left corner of Chrome
  • Search for ‘Diagnostic’
  • Launch the Diagnostics App:

Checking CPU Usage

  • In the Diagnostics app scroll down until you see CPU with a graph.
  • Pay attention to the Current Usage value and look at the graph.
  • Proceed with whatever test/scenario you were receiving slow performance with, such as opening a large website like  cnn.com .
  • Switch back to the diagnostics app to see the usage. If it sits at above 95% usage for a while, your device is resource capped on the CPU, this is the cause.
  • Closing everything but the primary website/tab/application will assist with this, however certain large websites or applications will always use more CPU than others.

Checking Memory Usage

  • In the Diagnostics app scroll down until you see Memory with a graph.
  • Pay attention to the Current Usage value and look at the graph.
  • Proceed with whatever test/scenario you were receiving slow performance with.
  • If the available is less than 0.40 GB you’re overloading the memory, there is not enough to quickly load applications, so everything must wait in a queue until more comes available.
  • Close everything but the primary application to resolve this.

Checking Network Connectivity

  • In the Diagnostics app click Connectivity on the top left side:
  • Wait for a few seconds as it runs some tests:
  • When it is done, if everything is PASSED, you have no network connectivity issues. You can verify further information below, such as signal strength:
  • If any test FAILED, take a screenshot and click the Save test details on the bottom left. Upload this within a helpdesk ticket to be submitted for assistance.

If your network connectivity tests pass but you are still experiencing slowness AND your CPU + Memory are not overloaded

If your CPU + Memory test out fine and your network connectivity tests all pass but you are experiencing slowness, please run a speed test and provide a screen capture of that information in a ticket for assistance.
  • Visit  https://speed.cloudflare.com/ 
  • Allow the test to fully complete.
  • Items of importance here are:
  • Download speed (anything above 10Mbps is good for most activities)
  • Upload speed (anything above 2Mbps is good for most activities)
  • Latency (anything below 150ms is good for most activities)
  • Jitter (anything below 100ms is good for most activities)
  • Packet loss (this should be 0.X % or – , anything else here here could indicate a connection issue). Less than 1.0% is acceptable and generally not noticeable.