Solved Microsoft Edge not starting

Downloaded and installed Edge v119.0.2151.58. Made no difference. One weird thing, KB5031455 was installed on 10/26. I checked for updates a few minutes ago and the updater installed KB5031455 (again?) but the list of installed updates now does not show the 10/26 install. Update did not make a difference either.

Checked my Norton and Secure Browser is not installed.

Uninstalled Norton 360, rebooted, and tried Edge and Chrome. No difference without Norton.

Anything? I'm stumped.

Still works in test, and not in your regular profile?

I got one that might help - here is a trick that will create a new shortcut that will load the profile manager (instead of directly loading your profile):


When you click this newly created shortcut, it should open a neat little window that shows at least one profile window and that Guest Profile button at the bottom (mine is on the left).

OK, followed the instructions. After changing the 'Target' per howtogeek, I double clicked on the icon and Chrome opened to Site not reached (see first attachment). Then for grins and giggles I double clicked on the original Chrome shortcut (the one not working) and I received the second attachment. Now, however, if I select Profile 1 (the original profile), Chrome performs its disappearing act. So my profile is corrupted apparently. Is there any way to restore the original profile?

Well, if you have a backup, you can try that. But you restored a full system backup already and it remains broken, right?

As for testing a specific profile for issues, let me look.

But, good job on the progress - you have, at the very least, a working profile in your original user account.

The first screenshot may be simply because Chrome may have changed the way it handles the guest profile, and so it throws that up because it cannot be directly accessed like that anymore. I'll try in a few minutes on my end and see if I get the same.

Well, according to Fix Chrome if it crashes or won't open - Computer - Google Chrome Help

A few of those you've tried (repeatedly) yourself. at least one of those is what I referred to - Check to see if it is already open (in Task Manager).

The last ditch effort in their eyes is to uninstall and reinstall Chrome. Not a bad idea, since you now have a working profile.

Also, 360 is still disabled now, or did you end up re-enabling it?

If you enabled it, make a couple more spare profiles that you never actually run, just create them and give them a name - they can be your backups if it ends up being that 360 is, in fact, hosing Chrome and Edge profiles, and it hoses the new one you have now.

You can create quite a few profiles, and later on, when everything is working normally again, just delete them.

Ohhh, here's a good suggestion, from MUO:

#2 from 7 Ways to Fix "A Profile Error Occured" in Google Chrome for Windows

2. Delete the Google Chrome Web Data File​

#5 is not a bad idea to do at the same time anyway, just to be safe.

And notice #7 lol....

Well, managed to get Chrome working again with my Google profile by deleting \Users\<Current-User>\Appdata\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data and creating a new profile.

I also did the same thing to \Users\<Current-user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data. Creating a new profile in Edge also imported some previous bookmarks, but not the ones added more recently.

So we'll see how all this works out in the coming days. Thanks to everybody, especially @johnlgalt, for all the help.

Just an update, I started Edge again and now all my current bookmarks are present so Edge must have sync'ed something so we're good to go.

That means you suffered some form of data of your browser profiles and hopefully it wasn't something you browsed or install that somehow messed up the data in it, could be data corruption or anything else as it's not easy to tell. So your problem is not really Norton but the profile data for the browsers. Best of luck anyways, and keep us posted.

Will do, and thanks again for everybody's help.

Adding to Almighty1's last post, I use multiple profiles in all browsers I use - and in the last 2 months I've had 2 profiles completely lose their sessions and act as if they are brand new - no history, no bookmarks, no previously opened tabs, nada. Both of these were in Firefox (Firefox Stable for one, Firerfox Nightly for the other) and since I've been using Fx since before I could stand (lol), I knew how to fix them.

The last time I had this issue with any of my profiles on any of my machines was a few years ago.

It is entirely possible this was not caused by a site your browsed to, or a random (and yet malicious) encounter with bad advertising - it could very well be something went stupid in the browsres themselves.

However, though at first glance what I just wrote above makes a lot of sense, think about his words further.

You were using a browser, and it worked, and then all of a sudden you come back and it is dead in the water.

You fire up another browser - and then probably tried to go to a site you were using just a few hours ago in the other browser when it was still working.

It's human nature - I venture that more than 75% of us would do the exact same thing - I was browsing, and boom! it dies, I open a new browser and go right back to where I was.

I'm one of those who doesn't - as soon as I get something not working right like that, I'm firing up a browser and trying other sites, including test sites, and Internet Speed test sites, first. But most go right back to what they were doing before - and get double whammied in the process.

That may well be the case as Chrome had completely axe the tabs tree where some tabs were saved and not loaded I had in Tabs Outliner extension so I don't know if there is a tool available somewhere to read the json data or not. Edge on the other hand with the same extension with another set of tabs had a problem where the extension wouldn't load but the next Canary Edge fixed it and all was well again.