New pc setup and keep getting WebDriverException: unknown error: Failed to create Chrome process

Question

Any new leads on this issue? I recently switched PC and now facing the same problem so many users faced. It was usually solved with downloading the latest chromedriver.exe or by moving the chrome.exe under the appdata folder structure but now I have done all the basic steps mentioned in various forums and answers but still getting the org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: unknown error: Failed to create Chrome process.

Tried --no-sandbox option, tried checking chrome.exe to have the run as admin unchecked. Nothing seems to be working.

My old pc had terrible config of all of the above and never faced an issue (magic). Now I cannot get it to work.

The exception is produced from this line: driver = new ChromeDriver(options);

and the code giving the options to chrome is:

 System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", 
 System.getProperty("user.dir") + "/src/main/resources/drivers/chromedriver.exe");

 final String regex = "^\\D*\\$$";
 final Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex, Pattern.MULTILINE);
 final Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(System.getProperty("user.name"));
 boolean isNotHuman = matcher.matches();

 ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
 if (isNotHuman){
        log.info("Chrome starting headless - isNotHuman: " + isNotHuman + " process run by " +System.getProperty("user.name")) ;
        options.addArguments("--headless");
        options.addArguments("--window-size=1980,1080");
 else {
        log.info("Chrome starting maximized - isNotHuman: " + isNotHuman + " process run by " +System.getProperty("user.name"));
        //options.addArguments("--no-sandbox");
        options.addArguments("--start-maximized");
 }

Answer 1

I saw it in yet another question about this particular problem and I thought "no way this would work", but I tried it anyway. I uninstalled and reinstalled Chrome. Removed the /application folder under the appdata and magically it worked. So, solutions that usually work:

1. Get latest chromedriver.exe that is compatible with your installed chrome
2. Verify that chrome is installed in the default location (some times, it helps to move the chrome.exe file under C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application)
3. Verify that chrome.exe does not run as admin (through properties-compatibility)
4. Reinstall Chrome