Saturday, March 19, 2011

Fixed error, "Your preferences cannot be read" Chrome Windows XP Home Edition

For XP Home Edition Users, to solve this problem do the following:

*** Make sure that your Chrome browser is closed before doing these steps.***

1. Boot into your Safe mode (Press F8 at the start up of your computer)
2. Open My Computer
3. Click Tools>>Folder Options>>View Tab
4. Under the "Hidden files and folders", make sure you select "Show hidden files and folders"
5. Click "OK" to close the Folder Options window
6. Go to C:\Documents and Settings\Yournamehere\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data
7. Right click file, "Local State>>Properties>>Security Tab
8. You will notice that the "Group or user names" box is blank
9. Click "Add".
10. Type your name (the name that you use to login to your computer or use the "Yournamehere")
11. Click "Check Names" to verify that you typed in the name correctly.
12. Click "OK" and "OK" again to close the "Local State Properties"
13. Re-boot your machine in normal mode
14. Open Chrome browser and the error should be gone

If you are using XP Professional just follow steps 2-14.

11 comments:

GregorS said...

Does not work for me. Teh instruction point 8. "you will notice..." is not my situation. I have three users and they all have complete permissions. I could not delete the one I used to login because that user was dependent on another or something - i had thought that I could remove the user and put it back in again... but No Joy :-(

HowWhyAndWhere said...

I cut and pasted Preferences from the "User Data\Default" directory, then *deleted the file "Local State"* in the "User Data" directory using command prompt and chrome started ok. After that I restored the Preferences file and it still worked ok on startup. But not sure if I really needed to touch the preferences...

MessageIsGone said...

Thanks a lot! This worked for me. I did some additional steps to take ownership of the files. I added my account as an owner because Win XP Pro prompted me to do it. After I got ownership of that file I could add my name as a user/group who controls that file. Without ownership I couldn't add my name! You need to add your name twice as owner and as user.
After that I set permissions to FULL.
Reboot.
Message is gone!

mbee123 said...

Worked perfectly for me. Many thanks.

Unknown said...

However after instruction 11 I have to add two more processes. 11b. click "advanced"
11c, check the option:"replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child......"

BigAndy said...

I actually found the fix on another site, but can't find my way back to say thanks. So I'll put the fix here.
Find your way to the user settings. C:\Documents and Settings\Andy\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome
Right-click to properties on "User Data" and go to the security tab then the advanced button.
Click the box "Replace permission entries...." Worked like a charm.
This is an XP fix.

Nickolai said...

Thanks, this worked for me after the official Google instructions failed.

s tzur said...

The above didn't work for me - but the following did.
First, export your chrome bookmarks to a html file. You do this in Chrome by clicking the menu icon in upper left hand corner, bookmarks, then bookmark manager, then export bookmarks to html.

Exit Chrome

Find your way to C:\Documents and Settings\[your name or "owner"\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data

Change the name of the folder "default" to "default backup". (You could probably just delete it).

Reopen Chrome. It will be like new. Import the bookmarks you saved. (Menu, bookmarks, bookmark manager, import html file}. Set your preferences. Next time you go it, hopefully you won't have a problem.

Anonymous said...

how about for windows 7?

Unknown said...

I get as far as step 7 and the computer wants me to select which program to open "local state" file with. ???

John B Dougherty said...

thank you Dr R !!

this was a weird one -

laurie - right-click then select >>Preferences, you don't want to open the file