Description of the issue:
Hi there, a few hours ago my computer experienced a crash whilst I was browsing on Brave, during which I had to force-restart my computer. Upon doing so everything seemed fine, however when I opened brave browser, it was as if I was opening it for the first times with prompts asking me to make it my default browser and such, as well as some of my preferences.
I checked my saved info, and found out all my passwords except 2 old ones had completely disappeared. (I’m not sure why there’s 2 there instead of 0) Weirdly, my bookmarks, history, and other data was unaffected. After I searched around for a bit, I found out these logins are stored in the “Login Data” file Brave’s AppData directory, and sure enough I opened this file in notepad++ just to see, and I could see hundreds of websites listed where I saved my passwords to, but with random letters/symbols after them.
After I did some more research I found out this is because (as I understand it) brave encrypts the passwords using the OS user password, and that my keychain is stored in a Local State file in the User Data folder. A lot of responses I saw on other people asking this question says that apparently its because they changed their OS password or something similar, and now the passwords can’t be recovered due to losing the keychain… but for me this is not the case as I simply had a crash, and logged into my normal OS profile like usual.
It seems like Brave is unable to recognize/decrypt this password file, despite me not changing anything about the OS. I just had a crash and had to force-restart (maybe this messed some data up?)
I did notice though my Local State file in the User Data folder seems to have been created directly after I restarted, as the “Date Created” is the exact same time as the crash happened. Is it possible it got corrupted during my restart, and brave overwrote it?
Anyways, I was wondering if I can get some help to recover these passwords as I’m currently freaking out a bit. I understand its my fault for not backing these up. I’m just curious why I can’t recover them, despite only restarting the computer. Its strange, as the 2 passwords that do show up in Brave currently, do ask for my OS password to view them.
How can this issue be reproduced?
- Computer crashed whilst browsing on Brave (screen froze up and sound was looping)
- Force restarted my computer by the button as nothing would respond
- After the restart, Brave had wiped all my passwords except 2 old ones, but all my bookmarks and history had stayed.
Expected result:
Hopefully have all passwords recovered or unencrypted. Or if this can’t be done, why not if the OS has had no changes?
Brave Version( check About Brave):
1.77.101 Chromium: 135.0.7049.115
Additional Information:
I’ve already tried creating a new profile, and copying the Login Data file to the new profile. All this did was add the same 2 passwords, but none of the others to the list.
Have also tried NirSoft password viewer, and I can see all the websites I have saved passwords to, but with the password column blanked out.
Have spent hours looking through threads and posts about this issue, and haven’t been able to find any solutions. What I’ve written here, is information I gathered up on what might of happened, although I might be wrong. It’d be great to have some insight in if I can recover them, and if not, any ideas what might’ve happened?