Common Chrome browser issues

By default, Google Update attempts to check for an update on install, and fails at the firewall.

You can skip this check by passing the parameter "NOGOOGLEUPDATEPING=1" as follows:

msiexec /i GoogleChromeStandaloneEnterprise.msi NOGOOGLEUPDATEPING=1 /l*v log.txt

If you left auto-updates on, it's possible that the version of the MSI you're trying to install is already outdated. If you already have the dev channel or beta channel installed, the MSI can't overwrite that because these channels will be on newer versions.

To see what the latest stable version of Chrome is for Windows, click here. You can download the latest version here.

If you left auto-updates on, your installations have probably auto-updated to a later version. This is causing the repair to fail because you're already on a later version than the MSI.

You can download the latest stable MSI and use that for the repair instead.

If you run the install with the /f flag (to run it as a minor upgrade), you'll get this error message:

There is a problem with the Windows installer package. A program required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support personnel or package vendor.

You need to instead run the install with the /i flag to run it as a major upgrade.

Old versions are not available. The latest stable version is always available here.

We release a new "major" version to the stable channel about every 4 weeks. We also update the stable channel between major updates if we have important crash or security fixes.

If you're looking to repair an existing MSI installation, and you left auto-updates on, you can repair with the latest stable MSI.

There is only one version of Chrome on a machine at any given time. When the MSI notices that the consumer version of Chrome is already there, it will remove it and update the user's shortcuts. The next time the user launches Chrome, Chrome Enterprise is used.

This should look seamless to the user, but sometimes behaves inconsistently. You may want to uninstall the consumer version of Chrome before pushing out the MSI.

You can append these registry keys together with an additional parameter, and execute them:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Update\ClientState\{8A69D345-D564-463c-AFF1-A69D9E530F96}\UninstallString +
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Update\ClientState\{8A69D345-D564-463c-AFF1-A69D9E530F96}\UninstallArguments + '--force-uninstall'

The command will end up looking something like this:

[Path to user's data directory]\setup.exe --uninstall --force-uninstall'

No. User data is kept separate from the Chrome installation.

However, if the user was using a more recent version of Chrome, their profile data might not work in an older version of Chrome and they'll see a warning when they try to run it. You may want to verify that you're pushing out the latest stable channel version of Chrome.

We typically throttle updates the first few days after an update to watch stability rates and make sure we're pushing out a good update. Not all users will get the update immediately, so during this time you may see some machines auto-update while others do not.

If you require the most up-to-date version immediately, you may want to download the latest MSI and push it out manually.

When you use the Google Admin console to pin extensions to users’ browser toolbars, it builds a set of configuration text that is then set in a JSON string for the ExtensionSettings policy. In rare instances, extensions are not properly pinned on browser toolbars because the JSON string is invalid.

To verify that your extension configuration changes are correct, browse to chrome://policy. Find the value for ExtensionSettings and use your preferred tool to make sure that there are no errors in the JSON code.

We recommend that first you apply extension settings to a small number of users or browsers in a test organizational unit. Then, after you verify that extensions are working correctly, you can fully deploy them.

The default search provider policy uses a different format for the search provider URL than the format you see when you open the options dialog. Using the options dialog format causes the policy to be ignored.

To denote the search keywords in the search URL, use {searchTerms} instead of %s. Using Google's search URL as an example:

Wrong: http://google.com/?q=%s

Right: http://google.com/?q={searchTerms}

For more information on how to set search providers, see Omnibox search provider.

Chrome user profiles are not backwards-compatible. If you try to use mismatched profiles and Chrome versions, you may experience crashes or data loss. This mismatch can often occur if a Chrome profile is synced to a roaming profile or network drive across multiple machines that have different versions of Chrome. We strongly encourage administrators and users to consider using Chrome Sync, which persists user settings across machines, instead of using roaming profiles at this time.

With that in mind, there are policies for controlling the location of the user profile and the cache:

• UserDataDir
• DiskCacheDir

By default, Windows 10 users don’t have the ability to use single sign-on (SSO) through Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) with Chrome browser. To enable SSO from Chrome, you must add the browser to the list of ADFS supported browsers.

1. Log in to your primary ADFS server and open a PowerShell session.
2. Check the current list of ADFS supported browsers and other user agents. Type:

   PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-AdfsProperties | Select -ExpandProperty WIASupportedUserAgents

   The resulting output shows the current supported user agents (including any browsers). For example:

   MSAuthHost/1.0/In-Domain 
         MSIE 6.0 
         MSIE 7.0 
         MSIE 8.0 
         MSIE 9.0 
         MSIE 10.0 
         Trident/7.0 
         MSIPC Windows Rights Management Client 
         

3. Add the Mozilla browser to the list of supported browsers. When Mozilla is on the supported list, the Chrome browser is also supported. Use the following script:

   
         $add_agent = "Mozilla/5.0" 
         $user_agents = Get-AdfsProperties | Select -ExpandProperty WIASupportedUserAgents 
         if ($user_agents -notcontains $add_agent) 
         { 
            $user_agents += $add_agent 
            Set-AdfsProperties –WIASupportedUserAgents $user_agents 
            Restart-Service adfssrv 
         } 
         $user_agents = Get-AdfsProperties | Select -ExpandProperty WIASupportedUserAgents 
         if ($user_agents -contains $add_agent) 
         { 
            Write-Host "Successfully added $add_agent agent to ADFS" 
         } 
         else 
         { 
            Write-Host "Failed to add $add_agent user agent to ADFS" 
         }

4. Restart the ADFS service on each of your other ADFS servers. Type:

   Restart-Service adfssrv