Local Brave Profiles Missing After Restart

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Description of Issue:
Hi there!
Last night I restarted my computer and upon logging in this morning, all of my local profiles are missing from Brave. I am able to see them from the %localappdata%/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/User Data/ folder, verified by checking the contents of the Bookmarks file within each profile.

How can this issue be reproduced?
I’m unsure of how exactly this happened, since I’ve never had issues with restarting my PC and then losing any local profile data.

  1. Restart PC?
  2. Open Brave

Expected result:
Local profiles should be visible withing brave.

Brave Version:
1.73.101 Chromium: 131.0.6778.139 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Additional Information:
I managed to find a few related articles where other people seemed to have the same issue, but none of them had the solutions posted. They all resulted in some sort of “I’ll DM you” scenario.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

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2

Please backup the “BraveSoftware” folder, to a safe location.

Be Prepared

IF, you think, possibly Microsoft Windows Defender senses something, then:

Sometimes, the following two steps, are sufficient to get Brave Browser running properly.

With BB not running, delete the ‘Caches’ folder, and delete the ‘Cookies’ file.

Caches (folder):

  • %LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\Cache\

Cookies (file):

  • %LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\Cookies

Clear cookies, cache, history, etc.

In a Brave Browser New Window, go to:

brave://settings/clearBrowserData

Select the Advanced tab

Set Time range to “All time”

ENABLE everything except:

  • Passwords and other sign-in data

(Myself, I would NOT make that exception)
(because I would have a backup prepared.)
(In other words, be prepared.)

Click on the “Clear data” button

Change the path within the Brave Browser shortcut on your computer’s Desktop, to include switches that are intended to:

  • Start up Brave Browser, showing a New Private Window
  • Disable all experiments at brave://flags
  • Disable extensions
  • Disable GPU ie disable Hardware Acceleration
  • Enable leak detection and if that failure occurs, then crash the browser (–enable-leak-detection --crash-on-failure are a combo)
  • Produce error/log output to a file named ‘brave_console_out.txt’ on the Windows OS Desktop

The Brave Browser executable, brave.exe, is located in one of:

64 architecture

  • "C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application\brave.exe"

x86 architecture

  • "C:\Program Files(x86)\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application\brave.exe""

Changed Paths:

64 architecture (change the path to):

"C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application\brave.exe" --incognito --no-experiments --disable-extensions --disable-gpu --enable-leak-detection --crash-on-failure 2> %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\brave_console_out.txt

x86 architecture (note the switches to add):

"C:\Program Files(x86)\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application\brave.exe" --incognito --no-experiments --disable-extensions --disable-gpu --enable-leak-detection --crash-on-failure 2> %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\brave_console_out.txt

Notice that the existing path, BEFORE the additions, is enclosed by double-quote marks. And, everything added to the existing path, is located after the existing path.

With Brave Browser running, test your issue.

When you think appropriate, restore the Brave Browser shortcut . . .

64 architecture

  • "C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application\brave.exe"

x86 architecture

  • "C:\Program Files(x86)\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application\brave.exe"

More Be Prepared - Make the following a routine:

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