[Fix] Google Chrome Not Opening After Using Chrome://Flags Page

If you enabled or disabled some preferences/flags using chrome://flags page in Google Chrome and the web browser no longer opens in your computer, this article will help you in fixing the issue. Recently I faced this issue while modifying a few flags in Chrome. The web browser stopped opening or responding. When I clicked on Chrome shortcut icon on Start Menu, Taskbar or Desktop, nothing happened and I was unable to launch Chrome browser in my device. I was able to resolve the problem using the solution given below in this article.

If you use Google Chrome web browser, you might be aware of its hidden secret advanced configuration page called Experiments which can be accessed using Chrome://flags URL in address bar. Google Chrome allows users to enable/disable features and change functionality using this secret Experiments page.

Users can turn on or off various flags (also known as preferences) and change some flags values to enable or disable new features. Many times Google doesn’t enable new features by default in newer versions of Chrome and interested users need to change flags in Experiments page to manually activate and enable those features. Similarly sometimes Google launches new features in Chrome and provides hidden flags in Experiments page for advanced users to manually deactivate and disable them.

Changing flags in Chrome://flags page is dangerous and sometimes it may cause issues. I have seen many times that users change flags in Chrome://flags page and when they relaunch or restart Google Chrome browser, it starts crashing. Sometimes it starts and suddenly closes after a few seconds. I have also seen that sometimes Chrome stops opening at all after changing flags.

If you are also facing this issue and Chrome started crashing or closing automatically after enabling/disabling flags in Chrome://flags page, this tutorial will help you in fixing the issue.

The main problem is if Chrome is not opening, you can’t restore the flag to its default value by opening Chrome://flags page.

Don’t worry! There is a file which stores all changed flags in Chrome and you can edit the file and remove the changed/enabled/disabled flags from it. Once you remove flags entries from the file, Chrome will start opening normally without any problem and the modified flags will be automatically restored to their original default values.

The file which stores flags entries is named as Local State and is present under following folder:

To access and edit this file, do as following:

STEP 1. Press WIN+R keys together to launch RUN dialog box.

STEP 2. Type appdata in RUN dialog box and press Enter. It’ll open AppData folder in File Explorer.

STEP 3. Now go to following folder:

STEP 4. Under User Data folder, look for Local State file.

It’s basically a text file but it doesn’t contain any extension so Windows recognizes it as an unknown document and doesn’t show any known file type icon for it. Windows shows a blank file icon for it.

STEP 5. Double-click on Local State file and Windows will show Open with dialog box to select application to open the file. Select Notepad or any other 3rd party text editing program if you installed in your computer.

NOTE: If you can’t modify Local State file, you can delete it. It’ll also solve Google Chrome crashing issue.

STEP 6. Now the file will be opened in Notepad and you’ll be able to see its content.

In the beginning of the file, you’ll see following line of code:

The “enabled_labs_experiments” section contains list of all modified flags which were changed by the user using Chrome://flags page.

All flags are separated by the comma and enclosed between [ and ].

If you know which flag you changed and caused the issue, you can remove the flag entry from the file.

If you are not sure, you can remove all flag entries present and enclosed between [ ].

STEP 7. After removing flags entries, save and close the file.

That’s it. Now open Google Chrome and it’ll open without any problem and modified flags will be reset to default values.

TIP for Mozilla Firefox Users:

Similar to Chrome, if you want to reset or restore all modified preferences/flags in about:config page in Mozilla Firefox web browser, following tutorial will help you:

[Tip] Reset or Restore About:Config Settings to Default in Mozilla Firefox

Also Check:

[Tip] How to Launch Google Chrome with All Extensions Disabled

[Fix] Google Chrome Crashes With “Aw, Snap!” Error on Startup or Opening Websites

[Fix] Mozilla Firefox Keeps Crashing Constantly on Startup