What happened to my Google Chrome Install

Question

For some reason, I booted up my work computer today, like I always do, and the batch file I threw in the startup folder to quickly open up all of my applications told me that "chrome.exe doesn't exist". The icon for Chrome that I have pinned to my taskbar shows the Windows "unrecognized file" icon, as shown here (between the VLC and VNCScan icons):

And the shortcut on my desktop, as well (visible title "COO Landin..."):

Also, if I were to click the shortcut on the desktop it says "application not found" BUT if I click the one pinned to the taskbar, Chrome opens right up.

Also, my WebMatrix 3 application, no longer recognizes Chrome as one of the 5 browsers I have installed, so the quick launch option from the WebMatrix IDE no longer shows Chrome (this is particularly annoying, as now, the quickest way to open up my site-in-development in Chrome from the IDE is to quick launch it from another browser and copy the URL or just type it in Chrome every time).

Google Chrome is set as my default browser and I am on a Windows 7 64-bit machine.

I'm hoping that there is an easier solution than to have to uninstall and reinstall Chrome, because that would be a huge pain, especially if this happens again.

Things I have tried

I did a quick reboot to see if that fixed anything, but it does not.

Checked Chrome to make sure I am signed in (not that I think that would make a difference, but it would show something else out of the ordinary happening).

Is there anything I can do to get it to "check again" or should I expect that an update or something re-structured/re-named the folders in which Chrome resides? I could redo the shortcut, of course, but what about for WebMatrix? No option exists to "re-check" for browser installs, AFAIK.

New Info:

I just learned that when I go to "About Google Chrome" to check for updates it says:

Version 28.0.1500.72 m Nearly up-to-date!

Relaunch Google Chrome to finish updating.

Then I click the "Relaunch" button, and it relaunches, comes back up, and says the same thing. I can go on forever just clicking the relaunch button over and over again, but it always just says:

Version 28.0.1500.72 m Nearly up-to-date!

Relaunch Google Chrome to finish updating.

Answer 1

WORKAROUND

I found that there is some kind of a Chrome glitch (as if it were the only one...) that you can read about here: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=60876

Seems a workaround (this worked for me) was to browse to the Google Chrome folder (for me it was my username/AppData/Local/Google/Chrome/Application) and delete the old version folder, along with the old_chrome.exe file. Then renaming the new_chrome.exe file back to just chrome.exe.

That seemed to fix everything, except the desktop shortcut icon, which can be easily fixed by making a new shortcut or changing the icon for the existing shortcut manually. Even WebMatrix saw my Chrome install again after this.

It was also suggested that using a registry cleaner (CCleaner is a good one), may help with some of the icon problems, but this had no impact on this situation for me.

Answer 2

Are you running Steam by any chance (as in the gaming client software)? It was locking chrome.exe for me. Stop Steam and restart Chrome. That should do it.