Brave immediately closes after opening

[bcye]

Description

Brave does not open after a fresh install. A blank transparent window appears for < 1 second and closes. No tasks are in the task manager.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install brave from brave.com
2. Doesn't open
3. Try to manually open
4. Doesn't work either

Actual result:

Brave doesn't open

Expected result:

Brave opens normally

Reproduces how often:

Always

Brave version (brave://version info)

n/a, version of 2022-06-02

Version/Channel Information:

Issue happens on all channels

Other Additional Information:

The issue is not reproducible in Chrome or MS Edge, but in all other Chromium Browsers (i.e. Vivaldi). I'm running Windows 10 on a Razer Blade 14 2021 with a mobile RTX 3070.

Miscellaneous Information:

[bsclifton]

@bcye thanks for the report - so the install itself works fine, it's just that launching Brave is not working for you. Can you confirm you have a shortcut dropped on the desktop? You can edit that shortcut and try adding --disable-gpu to the command ran to see if that helps

[bcye]

Oh sorry, I forgot to mention, I tried this and it didn't work and nothing appears differently when launching with that flag. It did require me though to grant administrator privileges to add the flag, is that normal?

[bsclifton]

ah interesting- that helps give a clue. Maybe you can uninstall Brave and then right click the installer and pick Run as Administrator

The could be a permissions issue preventing Brave from creating the profile folder needed (usually gets created at %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data

[bcye]

The User Data folder exists, but I tried it anyway and it didnt work.

[lazymonkey2]

try renaming the brave.exe executable

[bsclifton]

@424344 that is a great call 😄

@bcye can you rename brave.exe to chrome.exe? If you're a gamer, there are anti-cheat programs we know about which (for whatever reason) don't have an entry allowing brave.exe

[Brave-Matt]

@bcye, Can you try downloading/installing the Beta build to test and see if it also crashes?

[bcye]

@Brave-Matt I tried it on all channels Beta/Nightly/Stable, but luckily renaming the .exe file to chrome.exe did the trick... crazy that anti-cheat programs can control which apps I can open...

[bcye]

Though now the icon is gone, do you know how I can get it back? It is still visible in the windows search and next to the brave.exe/chrome.exe file, but for the taskbar and shortcut it's gone. I tried a restart.

[bsclifton]

@Brave-Matt do we have a help article about this?

@bcye do you mind sharing what programs you have installed? I know both Riot Games and Epic Games have anti-cheat software (many others too). It would be great to ID which vendor is having the problem so we can try to work with them and get our application allowed

[bcye]

@bsclifton Sure, the only multiplayer games I have installed are League of Legends, Apex Legends, Rocket League and Overwatch, though I also have the Epic Launcher installed for other games, but I think it shouldn't install Anti-Cheat software there unless I install a multiplayer game/Fortnite.

[bcye]

Though now the icon is gone, do you know how I can get it back? It is still visible in the windows search and next to the brave.exe/chrome.exe file, but for the taskbar and shortcut it's gone. I tried a restart.

This issue isn't happening anymore, seems to have been about cache, the icon is now displayed properly.

[rebron]

Closing per last comment. Thanks @bcye

[bcye]

Hi, just for completeness I still noticed the following: Everytime Brave updates it creates the new executable brave.exe instead of overwriting chrome.exe and the old one doesn’t work anymore, and after deleting the old one and renaming the new one, the icon issue is back until the cache is refreshed again.