Selenium: WebDriverException:Chrome failed to start: crashed as google-chrome is no longer running so ChromeDriver is assuming that Chrome has crashed

Question

Recently I switched computers and since then I can\'t launch chrome with selenium. I\'ve also tried Firefox but the browser instance just doesn\'t launch.

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Answer 1

This error message...

selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: unknown error: Chrome failed to start: crashed
  (unknown error: DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist)
  (The process started from chrome location /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome is no longer running, so ChromeDriver is assuming that Chrome has crashed.)

...implies that the ChromeDriver was unable to initiate/spawn a new WebBrowser i.e. Chrome Browser session.

Your main issue is the Chrome browser is not installed at the default location within your system.

The server i.e. ChromeDriver expects you to have Chrome installed in the default location for each system as per the image below:

¹For Linux systems, the ChromeDriver expects /usr/bin/google-chrome to be a symlink to the actual Chrome binary.

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Solution

In case you are using a Chrome executable in a non-standard location you have to override the Chrome binary location as follows:

• Python Solution:

  from selenium import webdriver
  from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
  
  options = Options()
  options.binary_location = "C:\\path\\to\\chrome.exe"    #chrome binary location specified here
  options.add_argument("--start-maximized") #open Browser in maximized mode
  options.add_argument("--no-sandbox") #bypass OS security model
  options.add_argument("--disable-dev-shm-usage") #overcome limited resource problems
  options.add_experimental_option("excludeSwitches", ["enable-automation"])
  options.add_experimental_option('useAutomationExtension', False)
  driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options, executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe')
  driver.get('http://google.com/')
  

• Java Solution:

  System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "C:\\Utility\\BrowserDrivers\\chromedriver.exe");
  ChromeOptions opt = new ChromeOptions();
  opt.setBinary("C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe");  //chrome binary location specified here
  options.addArguments("start-maximized");
  options.setExperimentalOption("excludeSwitches", Collections.singletonList("enable-automation"));
  options.setExperimentalOption("useAutomationExtension", false);
  WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(opt);
  driver.get("https://www.google.com/");