How to Fix Chrome Crashing on Windows 10
Earlier this week popular web browser, Google Chrome, started crashing unexpectedly for many of its users around the world, making web browsing impossible for its users. The last update for Chrome was released on the 10th of May, and until this crash there were no reported issues following the release of Chrome’s latest update.
User’s had reported that their Chrome extensions and tabs began crashing seemingly out of nowhere. This has lead to an influx of users turning to the Chrome subreddit and Chrome product forums, trying to find a fix.
One user said that “Seemingly out of nowhere ~15 minutes ago, Google Chrome stopped working for me. My extensions crashed and all pages (including Chrome pages like settings) refuse to load. The screen is completely blank, and the tab is simply labeled “Untitled” with a frowning folder next to it.”
So far the source of the problem is believed to be an issue with the folder Chrome uses to store data, extensions and configuration settings, ‘%UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data’.
One Google Product Expert suggested that to fix to problem, users should make a backup of their ‘User Data’ folder and then try one of these steps to fix the crashes:
As this only seems to be happening on Windows I will provide such instructions, but this will be operating system dependent:
- Ensure your Sync data is accurate at https://chrome.google.com/sync and passwords appear at https://passwords.google.com (If you have a passphrase they will not but they should be reflected in the sync data link)
- Close any open Chrome instance
- Open File Explorer and navigate to:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data- Delete the “
Local State” file from the directory (ensure you have a backup!)- Re-Open Chrome
If the above steps don’t resolve the problem then try the following
- Open File Explorer and navigate to:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data- Take a copy of everything in this directory and store it somewhere such as your desktop
- Rename the “
User Data” folder to something other than User Data- Re-Open Chrome
While this has worked for some users, others have said that even after trying these steps, their Chrome still crashes when launched afterwards. For those that still experience the issue, it is advised they use a more stable browser such as Mozilla Firefox until this issue is resolved.
There has yet to be an official response from Google regarding the issue, we can only hope that they will identify the cause of the issue and solve it soon.
