Disappearing Extensions on Managed Chrome Browsers

[Ryan Athey]

Hi all,

We’re seeing an issue with managed Chrome browsers where extensions disappear after a computer restart. Clearing cache and cookies, using chrome://restart, or resetting the Chrome profile temporarily restores them, but the problem reoccurs:

• Only managed browsers are affected.
• Org extension policies haven’t changed recently.
• Seems to be inconsistent/not consistently replicable after remediation

  I’m trying to determine the best way to troubleshoot why this is happening. Has anyone encountered similar issues or have suggestions on how to approach this?  

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[Patrick Kettner]

Hi Ryan,

I haven't heard of this happening to others. Is it removing all extensions? Or just ones specifically installed via policy?

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[Ryan Athey]

Yes It "removes" all extensions (The puzzle piece disappears) Chrome://restart restores the extensions. Some users state that restarting the computer fixes it. It is difficult to replicate. Support believes there is a conflict somewhere between Cloud User/Machine. and wants to see if force installing business critical extensions fixes it. 

We utilize a * for ExtensionInstallBlocklist and "Allow Install" for extensions we want to allow. This worked until we implemented managed browsers. 

I'm wondering if any of the policies related to merging ( PolicyDictionaryMultipleSourceMergeList, PolicyListMultipleSourceMergeList) have anything to do with it, but have a hard time logging what could be going wrong.

Ryan Athey | IT Systems Administrator
Office: (949) 676-2988
Email: ryan....@americor.com
18200 Von Karman 6th Floor, Irvine, California 92612

[Patrick Kettner]

Are the extensions themselves removed, or just the extension menu? As in what is shown when an impacted user goes to chrome://extensions?

If it is only impacting a subset of users, and is often fixed with reboots I am wondering if there is a policy corruption occurring. It would be good to know if hitting "reload policies" on chrome://policy/ changes anything.

[Ryan Athey]

When the user navigates to chrome://extensions it will be completely blank. It seems to be impacting only managed browsers. 

I would agree with the notion that something is getting corrupted between all the precedence/merging taking place but, as far as I'm aware, that's how it's designed to work. On one affected user, I tried "reload policies" to no avail. 

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Ryan Athey | IT Systems Administrator
Office: (949) 676-2988
Email: ryan....@americor.com
18200 Von Karman 6th Floor, Irvine, California 92612

[Patrick Kettner]

Would it be possible to share the contents of chrome://extensions-internals of an impacted user? Note that this could contain sensitive information, so please review it before sharing (and feel free to send it directly to me)