New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….
Original story (published on May 21, 2021) follows:
Google Chrome is by far one of the most popular web browsers around the world thanks to the early lead Google managed to secure against other web browsers years ago.
Google has also been working to reduce Chrome’s notoriously high resource usage as well as add new useful features such as the Reading List.
That said, Google Chrome users often run into other issues, the most common of which results in the browser throwing the ‘Aw, Snap’ message.
But now many Google Chrome users have taken to the company’s community forums, Reddit, and Twitter saying that it’s not working, extensions are crashing on startup or they’re seeing an untitled window.
We’ve shared some reports from affected users below for reference:
Reports saying Google Chrome is not working started popping up only a few hours ago and it appears that it’s affecting users on Windows 10 machines.
Given the influx of reports from users over the past few hours, it’s safe to say that this is a widespread issue.
Luckily, a Gold Product Expert on the community forums has confirmed that the issue appears to be with the User Data directory that stores information on the current install.
So as a temporary workaround, installing Google Chrome Beta should fix the problem according to the Product Expert.
You can use any other web browser such as Microsoft Edge to download and install the latest Chrome Beta.
Alternatively, you can even try to re-run the Chrome installer to see if it will repair your install:
The Product Expert has also shared another workaround that involves re-creating the user-profile directory. However, this might lead to data loss such as passwords, bookmarks, and site data, in case you’ve not enabled sync.
Many users have confirmed that these workarounds fixed the issue for them. However, if Google Chrome still is not working on your Windows 10 machine, feel free to let us know in the comments below.
Google has not yet acknowledged the problem publicly. But we expect the bug to be fixed sooner rather than later.
As usual, we’ll keep tabs on the situation and will post an update if and when there are any further developments.
Update 1 (May 25)
02:45 pm (IST): Google has confirmed that they have released a fix for the crashing issue on Chrome. A Google employee has also shared the steps that users can take to fix the problem on Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS.
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