Update: A reader who had the issue has contacted us. They said that uninstalling Chrome then reinstalling it fixed the issue. However, you need to make sure that the ‘delete all browsing data’ box is checked when you uninstall.
Original article follows:
Google has just released an update for its Chrome browser, but it seems a bug is causing it to crash repeatedly for some users in Windows 10.
According to Windows Latest, users who installed Chrome 90 in Windows 10 are now experiencing random crashes. Some users are sensing a pattern, with Chrome crashing while loading extensions, but it’s too early to say for definite if that’s causing the issue.
The crashes can end up closing Chrome completely. Other symptoms appear to be pages and tabs not properly loading in Chrome, or extensions crashing (and popping up an error message in Chrome).
We’ve not experienced a crash yet, but Windows Latest claims it has. Looking through comments, it does seem quite a few people are having problems.
It also appears that the crashes are only affecting Windows 10 users – with people using Chrome on Linux, Chrome OS or macOS not experiencing these issues.
How to fix the problem
The easiest way to fix the problem appears to be uninstalling Chrome, then reinstalling it again. A reader has also contacted us to tell us that when uninstalling Chrome, make sure the box next to ‘Delete all browsing data’ is checked.
If the issue persists, go to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data on your hard drive and delete the “Local State” file.
Restarting Chrome should fix it. If it hasn’t then you could try using an early beta version of Chrome, as Google has identified the issue and fixed it there.
This should mean the fix will be made available for regular Chrome soon.
