My brave browser just blacked out completely today almost as if the app crashed. I could move the window around but couldn’t minimize or close it. So I went into task manager, ended the task and tried re-opening. It didn’t open so I decided to restart my computer.
Even after restarting, the browser is still no longer opening. I’ve noticed in task manager that I have two instances of “BraveSoftware Update” open but they are seemingly frozen (i.e. not consuming or fluctuating in disk space, CPU, or memory). I can’t force end this task as I’m using a work computer which is locked down.
Also when I try to open Brave, it also opens up two instances of these on the task manager but no window is open. I can’t “Switch To” from the task manager either.
I’m using Windows10 22H2 (OS Build 19045.4412). Please help!
You could try uninstall Brave, delete everything associated with Brave on the disk and in registry, reboot the machine, and then reinstall it, I think every thing you need to backup (your history, bookmarks, extensions ect…) are all in C:\Users\{your user name}\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data
(need people from Brave to confirm this)
Thanks mqvpeua, I tried this as much as I could since I can’t access the registry (locked down by workplace). I’m resigned to the fact that I have to stop using Brave on my work laptop which sucks…
How could I even export my setting/bookmarks/extensions/passwords etc from Brave when I can’t even open it? (To import into Chrome and start reluctantly using that)
Just copy this folder C:\Users\{your user name}\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data
to another place, and after you uninstalled and reinstalled it, delete the newly created C:\Users\{your user name}\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data folder and paste the backup of the old one back to place. (Brave needs to do be closed while doing this)
How could I even export my setting/bookmarks/extensions/passwords etc from Brave when I can’t even open it?
Settings/bookmarks/passwords ect… of the first profile of your browser is sotred in C:\Users\{your user name}\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default
That of the second profile is in C:\Users\{your user name}\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Profile 1
of the third profile is in C:\Users\{your user name}\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Profile 2
ect…
And Chrome’s folders are:
C:\Users\{your user name}\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\{Default or Profile 1 or Profile 2}
Under the folder, the “Bookmarks” file is where the bookmarks of the profile is, “Extensions” folder is where extensions are, “Login Data” (and “Login Data For Account”?) is where saved passwords are and “Preferences” is where settings are. Copy the “Bookmarks” file and “Login Data” file to the corresponding Chrome folder will “export” them to Google Chrome (but it’s not recommended to copy settings from Brave to Chrome cause it may break something).
EDIT: Some interesting developments… I found this post where they identified that not all files were removed during the uninstall process. I went into all the various locations and manually deleted folders/files (after taking backups of course) then did a reinstall and it worked!
So then I thought I’d re-paste my previously backed up “User Data” folder and try opening again - which didn’t work. Back to the original problem. So there’s something in my User Data folder that’s corrupted Brave from opening properly.
What can I do to safely re-import my bookmarks and other things that my user data folder contains?
Unfortunately it seems that you have to uninstall and reinstall Brave again…
This time after new installation is finished, close the browser and backup the profile folder C:\Users\{your user name}\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\{Default or Profile 1 or Profile 2…} to another place (Let’s call it “backup_new” and the old backup “backup_old”).
After that, try copy the “Bookmarks” and “Login Data” files from backup_old\{Default or Profile 1 or Profile 2…}\ folder to C:\Users\{your user name}\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\{Default or Profile 1 or Profile 2…} and overwrite the file, open Brave and see whether it breaks, if it doesn’t, then,
Close Brave, delete folders that start with “Extension” (i.e. “Extension Rules” “Extension Scripts” “Extension State” “Extensions”) in C:\Users\{your user name}\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\{Default or Profile 1 or Profile 2…} and replace them with those folders from backup_old\{Default or Profile 1 or Profile 2…}, and then open up Brave. If it breaks this time, then you probably have to manually install each extension.
To do this, first close the browser and delete those 4 extension folders and replace them with those from your backup_new folder, after doing this, open up Brave and copy https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ to your address bar and copy the name of each folder under backup_old\{Default or Profile 1 or Profile 2…}\Extensions\ and paste them after https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ one by one, and then install the extension on each page.
For example, If the first folder is bhghoamapcdpbohphigoooaddinpkbai, then you should go to https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/bhghoamapcdpbohphigoooaddinpkbai to install it.
After finished installing each extension, you can try copy-paste the Preferences file from backup_old to C:\Users\{your user name}\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\{Default or Profile 1 or Profile 2…} and see whether it will break, if it does, then use the method above to restore and manually set things up.