Making Google Chrome leave itself alone - google-chrome

Let me preface this question by saying: It's crazy. I know it is. But the requirement is not mine, it's someone else's, and I'm trying to honor it.
I need to install a months-out-of-date version of Google Chrome so I can run repeated tests against it. But it's proving to be surprisingly difficult to turn Chrome updates off.
I did the trick of disabling the "Google Update" plugin in chrome://plugins. After that, I uninstalled Chrome and installed the old version. I double-checked that the version was the old version and that updating was non-functional ("error 3"). I didn't even see "Google Update" listed in chrome://plugins at all after this. So I thought I was good.
Then just now, I fired up Chrome to look at it again, and it was back to the newest version!
Is there something I overlooked? Are they doing some kind of black magic here?

Windows
For Microsoft Windows, here is the simplest and lowest-impact solution I have found.
Create a text file with these lines:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Update]
"AutoUpdateCheckPeriodMinutes"=dword:00000000
"UpdateDefault"=dword:00000000
Save it to a file ending with ".reg" somewhere on your desktop. Double-click it to install new registry keys.
This disables automatic updates, and when you open "About Google Chrome" from the tool menu, you get the helpful message "Updates are disabled by the administrator."
Mac
(Instructions anyone may want to add for Mac OS can go here...)

Don't do this.
Really. I wasn't kidding. Updates are important.
See #1.
You're still here, so I can only assume that you're crazy enough to really want to turn off updates: http://support.google.com/installer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=146164 explains how you can disable updates via policy. Editing registry entries locally should be effective.

Related

Default search in Google Chrome locked to smartsputnik

I have deleted and created a new user, cleared history, cleared cache even uninstalled and then installed chrome again, but nothing. Any solution for that.
I have seen some software while searching on different websites but em afraid they can also b some sort of malware, what should i do, any Help......
You can change registry in Windows by running regedit.exe, usually you don't need external tools for that. A quick search for "smartsputnik" in regedit reveals that some Chrome-related entry contains a link to it. Changing it back to what it should be, that is e.g. what Chrome uses for its search query, should fix the issue. For my colleague it was
{google:baseURL}search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:iOSSearchLanguage}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:contextualSearchVersion}ie={inputEncoding}
After the change, you can delete the offender from search engines as well, that seemed to be impossible while it was the default. That helped to restore Chrome itself, but this blog post says it will also append "http://smartsputnik.ru/?ri=1&uid=" as the argument to random shortcuts. That could be devious, but I've not observed that yet, will check and see.
BTW, my colleague did not install any software recently, so it looks like this malware learned a new trick.

Dev Tools Crashing on Chrome Version 50.0.2661.102 m

So i have the following problem.
Any time i click on a request to view the headers/payload/response
i receive a not responding window.
If i wait ~2 minutes it works.
So what i receive here is a developer tools not responsive status when working on local machine.
I tried to re-install chrome. Nothing changed.
Current Version is: Version 50.0.2661.102 m listed as up to date.
Is there any possibility to get some logs or did anyone faced the same problem?
I think it can be relevant if i show what extensions i have installed.
But i tried to enable/disable them and nothing changed.
And i get the same comportment in incognito mode too.
Later edit: I somehow identified the problem. Idea is that chrome is trying to display the cookie (request headers) which was 18k characters long and it looks like this is slowing a lot developer tools and sometimes make him crash.
I just saw that in Mozilla cookies are limited to a couple of characters (display perspective) and after that they show ...
I can't find any known issues regarding this crash, so here are a couple of steps you could take:
Use the Chrome Cleanup Tool and see if that helps.
Fully clean and re-install Chrome (including deleting user folders). If it works after that, you can slowly add extensions and plugins back and see if any reintroduce the problem.

google chrome ver. 45.0.2454.85 do not work with comodo guard32.dll ver. 8.2.0.4674

On windows 7x32 with comodo internet security 8.2.0.4674 (that uses guard32.dll in %systemroot%\system32 directory) I updated google chrome to version 45.0.2454.85, but could not run it, because got error in module guard32.dll.
I was able to solve this problem only renamed guard32.dll, after that chrome runs.
I think it is bad way, especially if I will update CIS, it will place guard32.dll again and chrome do not run again.
How to solve this problem?
As a workaround, go to the settings of Comodo > HIPS > shellcode injections and add chrome to the exception list. That should make chrome and comodo work together again, letting you upgrade both. However, note that the chrome process is not protected from shellcode injection anymore, of course. Both the chromium team and Comodo know of the issue. Once fixed you should be able to remove exclusion again.
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=527496
https://forums.comodo.com/bug-reports-cis/guard32dll-kills-chrome-45-t112785.0.html
HIPS setting is the ticket (for now I guess)
A lot of scary sounding links for fixes for this focused around viruses. Spent a few hours on those (no hits), but after this link ...tada, hips and back and running. THANKS! ...phew...
That didn't work for me. I used to use ZoneAlarm and had to ditch it, because it started stomping on my other legit programs like this. If Comodo doesn't issue an immediate fix, I will have to uninstall it, as well, and use something else.
Disabling HIPS, adding exceptions, etc. does not work. Goggle Chrome will not run. I guess I have to uninstall Comodo and use something else. I have already spent half a day on this crap.
Adding to the exclusion list did work however to get chrome to run I must right click the exe or shortcut of the exe and select "Run in COMODO sandbox". Simply clicking the icon will not run chrome anymore.
Find in the COMODO Firewall HIPS section 'detect shell code injection' and follow Brave Cobra's instructions.

Set start page for google chrome

Browser start up going to a specific page even though I tried to changed it in settings and uninstalled the app which leads to.
It can be changed once but it changes to default after a while.
What is the solution?
It means you have not cleared virus-like program. Use some special tool like CCleaner to clean all unwanted programs, reinstall chrome.
If that's not working, re-install Windows (or iOS, Linux or what ever OS you are using).
Future tip
Always double check all checkboxes/radio buttons when installing anything. Sometimes there is even decline button that must be clicked instead of checkbox/radio button.
Google provides a tool to reset and recover your Chrome software from malicious software, addons, and extensions called the Software Removal Tool. You might give that a try.

Chrome 22 Developer Tools - Global Sources Search not working right (ctrl-shift-f)

this morning I noticed my Chrome updated to Chrome 22 and that the search in the top right has been removed and can now be accessed with ctrl-f.
I also noticed that ctrl-shift-f is no longer working as expected... (but this is inconsistent)
The global search has been a huge time saver for me, and now sometimes it doesn't work until I've viewed a script at least once.
For example, I have 5 scripts that I know all contain "fn_init"
I search for fn_init and nothing comes up.
I open one of those scripts and then ctrl-shift-f again, and finally get a matching result for just the one file...
Is this working as intended? Am I missing an option or something? My dev tools config options are:
General
Disabled cached
Sources
Show folders checked
Search in content scripts checked
Also: how can I install an older version of Chrome and stop it from updating automatically?
To get an older version of Chrome your best bet is to find a build of Chromium from https://chromium-build.appspot.com/p/chromium/console however if this if for devtools stability you are missing out on a lot of new features and bug fixes.
As for Search across all files it is still there and CTRL-SHIFT-F on Windows and CMD-OPT-F on Mac. See Addy Osmani's post https://plus.google.com/115133653231679625609/posts/e4W2kdrFJY9
If you find issues as bugs, it is better to raise the issue on http://crbug.com/new as it will get direct attention from the engineering team there.