Chrome keeps crashing, even on Google pages, like Calendar or Gmail

Nowaday browsers has become very large and complex pieces of software, so believe it or not, there could be theoretically thousands of reasons, why your Google Chrome keeps crashing. Here you’ll find some tips and solutions, on what you can try to do, before you start screaming and bloating forums, saying that Chrome sucks and Firefox is the best.

I have filtered all the “good ideas”, that says, you should drop Chrome in favor of this or that browser, that you should go to the mass and pray or that you should buy a gun and shot yourself or your computer. Here you’ll find only serious idea, on what you may try to check or do, to get your Chrome back working.

Introduction

Note: I wrote this post in the second part of June 2013, when version 27.0.1453.116 m was most recent, and when I was fighting my troubles with Chrome on Windows. But you my try to use these tips also for any future or past version or for any other operating system.

Most crash reports, tips and solutions are about seeing “Aw, snap!” page each time you start Chrome, open any of its configuration window or go to any page. My problem was even bigger. Chrome was crashing completely and Windows was reporting that Chrome is gone. Upon restarting browser, all was OK only when I was doing nothing (just staring at the empty Chrome). But whenever I went to any page or opted to reopen remembered sites, all was failing again.

Simple approach

Things I did. They brought no solution to me, but you should try them in the very beginning of every problem.

1. First of all — always and for every software — restart your browser (closing all of its windows) and then computer, if you haven’t done so yet.

2. If crash happens when you go to any (or particular) page, but Chrome stays stable if you don’t navigate to any URL, try to open that address in Incognito mode (Ctrl+Shift+N in Windows or right-click on Chrome’s icon on task bar). Try to reach that faulty (or any) page in this mode, to see, if particular website or Chrome itself are causing the problems.

3. Do the same, with all extensions disabled. Type chrome://extensions to omnibox and disable all of them. Check, if any of it are not causing problems.

4. Clear browser cache (Ctrl+Shift+Del). Some suggests, starting with the smallest amount of data from the time when you started experiencing this issue, and slowly increase the time frame to beginning of time. In such cases, I usually clear everything — I’m checking every option, except passwords and select to purge cache from the very beginning.

5. Reinstall Chrome — see below for details.

First four did not helped me, so I uninstalled Chrome. During uninstall process, I marked checkbox to remove application settings as well. As advised on some forum, I downloaded full, offline installer and installed Chrome with Internet connection turned of. This brought not much help.

Strange thing — though I marked a checkbox to remove application settings and data, upon reinstall I found my profile intact, I was again logged into my Google account. And Google kept crashing again.

More advanced approach

Since I found my profile existing after reinstall, it became main suspect. It turned out, I was right.

With help of these simple information I’ve managed to get rid of my profile and create new one. That helped, which let me assume, that my old user profile become somehow corrupt.

Seems that (as of writing this), creating new profile helped in my case. If, after restarting system, reinstalling Chrome and creating new user profile, your problem isn’t solved yet, and your Chrome keeps crashing, here are some thing you may consider:

1. Check Google Chrome errors and crashes page and try to locate crash description as close to your situation as possible. Click on proper link to follow to the solution. As I said, in my case it was: “Google Chrome no longer works or closes after several seconds” problem, followed by a solution: “(…) your Google Chrome user profile may be corrupted”.

2. Execute sfc.exe /scannow command . This should run an utility that will scan and repair problems with protected system files on your computer.

3. Check for possible software conflicts (on Windows). Start Chrome without any page loaded and type about:conflicts to the address bar. See, if there are any remarks of any troubles, and if so (conflicting software found), try to resolve them.

4. Read last crashes report, by typing chrome://crashes into omnibox. See, if any information there can be helpful for you.

If anything of above does not bring help to you, then — sorry, to say this — I’m out of ideas and you have to try to search the Internet for more tips.

Leave a Reply