Can't open Chrome after starting ESO?

lemonizzle

I only found this thread after narrowing the issue to ESO, it took quite some time. Then it all clicked: around the 15th I started to have the same problem. Nothing else, no program or steam game causes this but starting up ESO. The window pops for a second, then disappears, seemingly without a trace - a restart fixes this. I'm on Win 7 64 Pro as well.
I really hope we get a fix, someday.

Madarc

Current status:
(on Win7/64 bit Ultimate/german/ESO via Steam)
The Chrome and Opera browsers still cannot be restarted once the game has been started. If I want to use these browsers, I always have to start them before the game.
New tabs can be opened, but if I close the browsers, they can only be reactivated after a computer restart. Even closing Eso in the task manager (in which it is often still displayed after closing) does not help.
By the way: Firefox (vers. 98.02/64-bit) is not affected.
_________________________________________________________________
In between i had also problems with the Steam internal browsers, concerned: Library, Friendlist, ChatWindow, Shop, et cetera. At least there it seems solved. (After a Steam update yesterday evening).

Alastrine

lemonizzle wrote: »

I only found this thread after narrowing the issue to ESO, it took quite some time. Then it all clicked: around the 15th I started to have the same problem. Nothing else, no program or steam game causes this but starting up ESO. The window pops for a second, then disappears, seemingly without a trace - a restart fixes this. I'm on Win 7 64 Pro as well.
I really hope we get a fix, someday.

I'm betting there are a lot of pple out there that haven't found this thread and think its a Chrome issue.

K9002

Alastrine wrote: »

I'm betting there are a lot of pple out there that haven't found this thread and think its a Chrome issue.

I thought it was some malware at first too. Took me two days of troubleshooting to notice the ESO connection.

YE4hR1GHT

Oh, in my case the solution to the problem took no time at all.
I stopped playing and giving money to ZOS.
It's them losing revenue, surely not me.

phil.maricel08ub17_ESO

ZOS_Bill wrote: »

For anyone having issues Chrome not opening after ESO has started, please go ahead and start a ticket with customer support so this can be looked into.

Noticed this while I was actually trying to reinstall and start playing this game again smh. Still the same old ZoS with the same old performance issues. Guess these guys are always in April Fool mode.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Started having this problem last night.

cncurbanmonk

and we back to crickets

Alastrine

phil.maricel08ub17_ESO wrote: »

ZOS_Bill wrote: »

For anyone having issues Chrome not opening after ESO has started, please go ahead and start a ticket with customer support so this can be looked into.

Noticed this while I was actually trying to reinstall and start playing this game again smh. Still the same old ZoS with the same old performance issues. Guess these guys are always in April Fool mode.

Yea, I wouldn't bother opening a ticket.
You'll go through all the cut/paste steps that they always have us go through and in the end they will kick it up to special assistance who will then close the ticket telling you they have sent it to the devs.
At this point I doubt there is any mileage in opening a ticket on this. Unless there is a new wrinkle no one has posted about here.

Red_Feather

Alastrine wrote: »

phil.maricel08ub17_ESO wrote: »

ZOS_Bill wrote: »

For anyone having issues Chrome not opening after ESO has started, please go ahead and start a ticket with customer support so this can be looked into.

Noticed this while I was actually trying to reinstall and start playing this game again smh. Still the same old ZoS with the same old performance issues. Guess these guys are always in April Fool mode.

Yea, I wouldn't bother opening a ticket.
You'll go through all the cut/paste steps that they always have us go through and in the end they will kick it up to special assistance who will then close the ticket telling you they have sent it to the devs.
At this point I doubt there is any mileage in opening a ticket on this. Unless there is a new wrinkle no one has posted about here.

Exactly. When I make support tickets I get scripted responses that claim to resolve the issue and then I get a 'rate it' email. Nothing is ever solved that way.

cncurbanmonk

They never answered what category to put it in when folks asked, as their stupid choices for what ticket about none were right but it wouldn't let you submit one w/o picking them......fine, not buying any new chapters and may just dump + again, if they don't want to acknowledge there is a problem and if they even plan on fixing it or if I have to exit game and reboot or log out of my computer in order to open a window to use the internet. Or is it s microsoft thing now that they own it and they will force you out of windows 7 into crap I don't want.....frustrating me as I do like this game but I'm tired of every patch screwing up something in my game w/o fixing anything that I"m having issues with every single patch as of last couple years.

Seravi

Sigh I would really like to use my other browsers again. Forget giving us all the freebies and gold. Spend time fixing the bugs please.

Tandor

cncurbanmonk wrote: »

They never answered what category to put it in when folks asked, as their stupid choices for what ticket about none were right but it wouldn't let you submit one w/o picking them......fine, not buying any new chapters and may just dump + again, if they don't want to acknowledge there is a problem and if they even plan on fixing it or if I have to exit game and reboot or log out of my computer in order to open a window to use the internet. Or is it s microsoft thing now that they own it and they will force you out of windows 7 into crap I don't want.....frustrating me as I do like this game but I'm tired of every patch screwing up something in my game w/o fixing anything that I"m having issues with every single patch as of last couple years.

They have acknowledged it, and are investigating it. Post #82.

VoltTaar

There is a working way to open your browser.
Open your Windows Explorer, and enter any website adress there.
It's not a fix, but it helps.

brimits

VoltTaar wrote: »

There is a working way to open your browser.
Open your Windows Explorer, and enter any website adress there.
It's not a fix, but it helps.

IE does continue to work but some web sites including this one do not like it.
I think the best work around is to open Chrome before starting ESO and leave it open. It will then continue to work.

VoltTaar

brimits wrote: »

VoltTaar wrote: »

There is a working way to open your browser.
Open your Windows Explorer, and enter any website adress there.
It's not a fix, but it helps.

IE does continue to work but some web sites including this one do not like it.
I think the best work around is to open Chrome before starting ESO and leave it open. It will then continue to work.

I was not talking about IE.
I said, that you can open your main web browser by typing a website address into your windows explorer. (Aka file explorer)

Vallenfyre

VoltTaar wrote: »

brimits wrote: »

VoltTaar wrote: »

There is a working way to open your browser.
Open your Windows Explorer, and enter any website adress there.
It's not a fix, but it helps.

IE does continue to work but some web sites including this one do not like it.
I think the best work around is to open Chrome before starting ESO and leave it open. It will then continue to work.

I was not talking about IE.
I said, that you can open your main web browser by typing a website address into your windows explorer. (Aka file explorer)

In fact killing "C:\Windows\explorer.exe" process in TaskManager and starting it up again helps without doing all the PC restart or whatever else people came up with. At least it does work for me.
(Edit:) It also works if I kill the process while ESO is running. Just tested it now. I think you guys should try it and see if it helps it's probably simplest and fastest way around right now.

Btw: I also had this issue with Quake Champions which was even worse cause every time I alt-tabbed, the game either took a minute to just quit/crash or did it instantly. Wether I closed the game or not I also couldn't run Chrome etc.
I remember reading something about new anticheat system or something and that it might be related to the issue, but again that was the case with QuakeChampions.

Sorinth

Vallenfyre wrote: »

In fact killing "C:\Windows\explorer.exe" process in TaskManager and starting it up again helps without doing all the PC restart or whatever else people came up with. At least it does work for me.
(Edit:) It also works if I kill the process while ESO is running. Just tested it now. I think you guys should try it and see if it helps it's probably simplest and fastest way around right now.

SECONDED.
Just tried it on my affected W7 rig and it works. Thank you VERY much.
All the programs I previously listed as being affected by the ESO client launching since the update (Chrome, Opera, Steam, etc) now work properly if explorer.exe is killed and restarted. This happened both after the ESO client was closed and while it was still running. I previously uninstalled ESO on my affected W10 laptop, so sadly I can't test it there.

Can others confirm if this works for them?

Vallenfyre

Sorinth wrote: »

SECONDED.
Just tried it on my affected W7 rig and it works. Thank you VERY much.
All the programs I previously listed as being affected by the ESO client launching since the update (Chrome, Opera, Steam, etc) now work properly if explorer.exe is killed and restarted. This happened both after the ESO client was closed and while it was still running. I previously uninstalled ESO on my affected W10 laptop, so sadly I can't test it there.

Can others confirm if this works for them?

Thats great!
I'm honestly starting to believe it's something related to explorer.exe and the TaskBar in particular... vs whatever the games causing the issue 'use/do' while started up.

Tandor

If I end explorer.exe in Task Manager it simply clears the whole desktop - icons, taskbar etc. How then do I restart explorer.exe?

Dagoth_Rac

Tandor wrote: »

If I end explorer.exe in Task Manager it simply clears the whole desktop - icons, taskbar etc. How then do I restart explorer.exe?

I think you have to alt-ctrl-del, start task manager, and there is a File|New Task/Run option in there. You can run explorer.exe that way. It seems to act like reloadui for Windows. I don't like doing this, though. It is kind of an extreme step and who knows what Windows background processes I am stopping and restarting unnecessarily just to get a simple web browser to open.

Tandor

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

If I end explorer.exe in Task Manager it simply clears the whole desktop - icons, taskbar etc. How then do I restart explorer.exe?

I think you have to alt-ctrl-del, start task manager, and there is a File|New Task/Run option in there. You can run explorer.exe that way. It seems to act like reloadui for Windows. I don't like doing this, though. It is kind of an extreme step and who knows what Windows background processes I am stopping and restarting unnecessarily just to get a simple web browser to open.

Thanks. I agree that this is not an approach I'd want to take.

Vallenfyre

Tandor wrote: »

If I end explorer.exe in Task Manager it simply clears the whole desktop - icons, taskbar etc. How then do I restart explorer.exe?

I don't know about you or other people for that matter, but I personally for few years now have TaskManager on TaskBar and open it after booting PC so I can always Alt-Tab quickly and check if something is off. To start explorer.exe again just click File>NewTask and type in explorer.exe. The next time you do this "explorer.exe" should be already there by default so it's just enough to click Run. That's it. I've done this bunch of times all works fine tbh. It's just the same as rebooting whole system pretty much except you reboot explorer.exe only.

K9002

I tried killing explorer.exe and it didn't help. Waiting a minute or two before restarting it didn't chage anything. The fastest working solution on my system is still a quick relog.

Seravi

Yeah I won't be killing explorer.exe. We should NOT have to do this! Didn't see any mention of this issue in the patch notes so another week of no browsers. Firefox isn't running so well either and that is the last browser I have.

Alastrine

Seravi wrote: »

Yeah I won't be killing explorer.exe. We should NOT have to do this! Didn't see any mention of this issue in the patch notes so another week of no browsers. Firefox isn't running so well either and that is the last browser I have.

No we should not.
They have said nothing about this for weeks now.
I've about had it with it all tbh.

cncurbanmonk

Yeah would be nice to least say something about it, or if they not going to fix it then just say that too. Makes me really want to preorder something that may not even be able to log into or play by the time they release it

Jaraal

cncurbanmonk wrote: »

Yeah would be nice to least say something about it, or if they not going to fix it then just say that too.

I'm sure by now they know exactly what's causing it, but they don't seem to be willing to undo whatever they changed to fix it. I would assume it's some kind of security protocol that they feel is more important to keep than revert to make a few folks on older systems have the same access as before. Just a theory, though. Besides, it would be rather troubling to learn that they actually don't know what's causing it after weeks of malfunction.

Tandor

Jaraal wrote: »

cncurbanmonk wrote: »

Yeah would be nice to least say something about it, or if they not going to fix it then just say that too.

I'm sure by now they know exactly what's causing it, but they don't seem to be willing to undo whatever they changed to fix it. I would assume it's some kind of security protocol that they feel is more important to keep than revert to make a few folks on older systems have the same access as before. Just a theory, though. Besides, it would be rather troubling to learn that they actually don't know what's causing it after weeks of malfunction.

It doesn't just affect older systems, it also stops Glyph and Steam from running properly on my Windows 10 computer (that was upgraded perfectly legitimately from Windows 7), although Chrome runs ok on that machine while none of those things run on my Windows 7 computer after running ESO.

ZOS_Kevin

cncurbanmonk wrote: »

Yeah would be nice to least say something about it, or if they not going to fix it then just say that too.

Wanted to follow up here. Gina noted earlier that we are aware of the issue and investigating. We just checked in on this earlier today and this bug is still being worked on, so there hasn't been anything to update yet. We will update once we have a fix in place and estimated timing for the fix.