A while ago, I was experiencing an issue where Brave would crash upon startup. It would flash a blank tab for a moment before closing. If I tried to open it again, it would crash even faster. I found from a helpful post that said that renaming the “brave.exe” file in the brave shortcut file location to “Chrome.exe” helps, but this fix only lasts until Brave is updated at which point the problem begins anew and I have to do the same fix again. Today, I opened brave and it was totally broken. The usual fix didn’t work and I had to completely delete and reinstall Brave, which seemed to bring the first issue of it crashing back, but I know how to deal with that so it wasn’t an issue. I tried to completely fix this by deleting an adblock directory in the program files as directed by a post I saw on here, but that didn’t do anything. Is there any way I can fix this? Brave seems to regularly break for me and it’s getting quite annoying. I’m on a Windows 10 if that helps.
TLDR: Brave crashes on startup, occasionally totally breaks down. Tried some fixes (adblock directory delete, renaming file, etc.) but nothing seems to work permanently. Help is appreciated.
@YoloSwaggins Renaming would have been a workaround more than a fix. It would have been nice to be able to have pursued on your issue to determine the problem and have teams work with you to get a proper fix. That said, I’m going to ask you some questions and we’ll see how much you can provide.
Is Brave able to stay open long enough for you to go to brave://crashes? If so, try to submit crash logs and provide crash report ID.
If you open in Private Window instead of normal, does it work any better/longer?
Do you have extensions on your browser? If so, have you tried to remove them?
Can you try to create a new browser profile and see if the issue persists there?
Do you have a security program and/or firewall active? If so, can you try to disable it and see if the browser still crashes?
I’m assuming you’re using the normal version of Brave. If none of the above works, can you try to install Brave Beta or Brave Nightly and see if issue persists? (If you do install these, try not to add extensions and all. Use it right “out of the box” for a while first. Then over time add things)
Perhaps I should have placed this higher, but how long does the browser stay open before it crashes? Does it happen regardless of whether you interact with the browser or only when certain actions are taken?
I did the renaming workaround to open the crash log and there don’t seem to be any crashes reported
Can I open a private browser window without opening brave in the first place? Idk how to
The only extension I was running was the youtube dislike button return, but brave is still crashing on the fresh install so I’m not sure that the extension is still even there
I created a new profile and it didn’t seem to resolve the issue
I’m not running any firewalls on my computer. My home wifi does have a firewall, but my family is able to run brave ok on it.
Downloaded Brave Nightly and Brave Beta, facing the same issue on both.
The browser usually instantly crashes. It occasionally stays open for almost a second, but it’s not long enough to do anything on it. It does happen every time I open the browser. I can usually tell if the problem started again after I do the renaming workaround because the brave desktop icon changes to the brave icon instead of the generic sheet of paper icon.
This tells us it doesn’t seem to be any settings or extensions within the browser.
While it still could be something in the Chromium base, as they are on same/similar. Usually when an issue persists across versions it means that it’s not the browser that’s an issue but is something on the device itself.
So it showed nothing, such as in screenshot below? If so, that’s weird because it should always have something there if the browser indeed has crashed. I’m wondering if you might not have some other issue going on, such as it’s being force closed by something rather than actually crashing. This has happened before with antivirus or internet security programs.
Don’t need to do it now since you tried the rest, but Private Window is done by hitting right mouse click on Brave icon in the quick launch bar (1), then you choose New Private Window (2)
The purpose of trying Private Window is because it runs without extensions by default.
New browser profile does the same, but it also has all settings back to default as well. So the two essentially narrow down issues in different ways. Which is why trying one and then the other to see results helps figure out potential issue.
So no firewall on yours, but are you using an antivirus program? If so, might want to try disabling it. Or you can create a new Windows user on yours and install Brave there, just to see if it works fine. If so, then it kind of confirms it’s just something on your Windows User profile that’s doing it.
I am assuming you have made sure all drivers have been updated as well, right?
