Google Chrome installer failed to start
TL;DR Manually delete Chrome uninstaller left overs on Windows to get rid off “Google Chrome installer failed to start” error during reinstall.
Some time last week Google Chrome browser on all workstations (Win7 x64) I use got their preference files corrupted and as a result I lost all my bookmarks, extensions etc.
Internet paranoid as I am, first thing for me was to scan for viruses, and luckily did not find any (just some friendly AdWare my beloved Lenovo has preinstalled for me but that’s another post). Just in case – I uninstalled Chrome and cleaned up registry using ccleaner before I do a clean install. One restart later, I was heading to google.com with my ol’trusty Internet Explorer in order to download and run Chrome installer.
What happened next was beyond everything I was prepared for – Google Chrome was unable to install throwing a undescriptive message: “Installation failed. The Google Chrome installer failed to start.“. Tried everything. Restarting, cleaning left over Chrome stuff manually from disk and registry, downloading and running alternate (offline) Google Chrome installer. No luck. Each time this irritating graphics slammed me:
The funny lol moment was reached when I googled for manual chrome uninstall:
First result, on Google support forum https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/111899?hl=en results in a – Page not available. *FACEPALM*
After hours of wasting my time googling I started considering a Windows re-install.
But at the end, digging through registry paid off. Found additional ‘special’ key which nobody mentioned nowhere for x64 os (Wow6432Node). After deleting it, I was finally able to reinstall Chrome.
First thing I did after I reinstalled it – I run ccleaner and – corrupted Chrome settings. Luckily I could repeat uninstall/reinstall procedure knowing what I was forced to learn. :)
Hope it will help somebody.
Solution
To fix “Chrome installer failed to start” issue, you have to manually delete Chrome uninstaller left overs:
1. Delete “%APPDATA%\Google” folder and all of it’s contents
2. Delete following registry keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE \Google\
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE \Google\
And the most important – for 64-bit Windows, delete also
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Google\
3. If you by any chance use ccleaner or any similar utility for deleting your browser/system cache, and you update your browsers regularly – be 100% sure to always update the cleaning apps to newest versions to avoid corruption of your browsers configuration.