Windows Parental Controls Are Blocking Chrome

david.emery writes: Microsoft is making it harder to use Chrome on Windows. The culprit? This time, it's Windows' Family Safety feature. Since early this month, the parental control measure has prevented users from opening Chrome. Strangely, no other apps or browsers appear to be affected.

Redditors first reported the issue on June 3. u/Witty-Discount-2906 posted that Chrome crashed on Windows 11. "Just flashes quickly, unable to open with no error message," they wrote. Another user chimed in with a correct guess. "This may be related to Parental Controls," u/duk242 surmised. "I've had nine students come see the IT Desk in the last hour saying Chrome won't open."

Thats weird and hilarious

[Murdoch5]

I wonder what is setting the filter off, and I doubt it's intentional because if Microsoft got caught, it would be a disaster. Does any other Chromium-based browser have the same issue, or Chromium itself?

Re:

[taustin]

I wonder what is setting the filter off, and I doubt it's intentional because if Microsoft got caught, it would be a disaster. Does any other Chromium-based browser have the same issue, or Chromium itself?

I wouldn't want to be Microsoft would be afraid of being caught these days. What were the consequences of the last antitrust case? Pretty much nothing. And the current political climate give far less of a crap about such things.

And they've screwed with Chrome before.

You know how when you download something, you get a little icon in the upper right showing the progress, and a little window you can click on to run the downloaded file when it's done? Always worked for every installer - except Chrome. The downl

Re:

[Murdoch5]

I just can't see them being this stupid, sure they've never been the neighbourhood house for safety, they're the white van driving around offering candy and puppies, but even this move is just too stupid for Microsoft.

Re:

[rudy_wayne]

I wonder what is setting the filter off, and I doubt it's intentional because if Microsoft got caught, it would be a disaster.

Please list all the terrible consequences Microsoft has suffered for their past behavior. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Re:

[Zocalo]

I remember the old "Windows ain't done until Lotus won't run!" schtick. I wouldn't surprise me at all if the "faulty" code originated with the Edge team to help encourage adoption of their version of the Chromium user tracking software over Google's version, and through doing so nudge a few more people into using Bing and Copilot instead of Google Search and Gemini for even more tracking.

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[narcc]

I remember the old "Windows ain't done until Lotus won't run!" schtick.

No, you don't. [slashdot.org]

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[fahrbot-bot]

I remember the old "Windows ain't done until Lotus won't run!" schtick.

To be fair, I have Lotus WordPro and 123, from SmartSuite 9.8, on my Windows 10 system now and they both run fine. I've converted all the files that use them, and most of my Office 2010 files, except my Publisher files, to LibreOffice in preparation for moving to my Linux Mint 22 (Cinnamon) system (previously Ubuntu - 'cause forced Snap) full-time. My systems are too old for Microsoft's arbitrary Windows 11 hardware requirements, but run Windows 10 and Linux just fine -- not that I'd really want to use W

Er, maybe MS knows something...

[buss_error]

...we don't? For the past few weeks, I've had Chrome act really squirrely on my daily driver to the point I VM'd a machine on a bastion to verify it wasn't simply a virus on my Linux box. Nope. The brand new install with base software and no extras was acting squirrely too, in exactly the same places in exactly the same way. No, not going into it just yet because I could be doing something incredibly stupid. Yes. I make mistakes sometimes. That's how you know someone is actually doing something and not simp

Re: Er, maybe MS knows something...

[Z00L00K]

Edge have been quirky all the time so nobody would notice if that started to act up. 25 clicks later after an upgrade and you can start to use it.

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[fahrbot-bot]

Edge have been quirky all the time so nobody would notice if that started to act up. 25 clicks later after an upgrade and you can start to use it.

I'd have trouble even seeing Edge from 25 km away. :-)

Lazy parenting again

[xack]

The current generation of parents have had computing experience from the 90s, so have no excuse not to supervise their children properly on the internet. Just imagine what other "controls" Microsoft has on your life.

That's an excellent start.

[RitchCraft]

Now get it to block Windows.

Blocking Chrome with Parental Controls

[PPH]

I've had nine students come see the IT Desk

Perhaps Microsoft recognizes Chrome for what it is: An advertising portal that shouldn't be in the hands of kids.

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[Sique]

And this is different from Windows 11 Home exactly how?

It is a feature

[rogersc]

How do content filters work? Turn web and search filters on to filter out sites and search results that are too mature when using Microsoft Edge on Windows (Windows 10 and Windows 11), Xbox (Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S), and Android devices. Other commonly used browsers will be blocked for this to work. https://www.microsoft.com/en-u... [microsoft.com]

MICROS~1 specifically targets the Chrome browser

[Anonymous Coward]

“Microsoft has introduced a bug into Family Safety that specifically targets the Chrome browser [theverge.com] .. Other browsers like Firefox or Opera appear to be unaffected, and some users have even found that renaming Chrome.exe to Chrome1.exe works around this issue.”

ObLinux: CUPS for the whinn

[redelm]

Why stay with MS-Windows? It is known-bad. I had lotsa trouble finding a driver for my aging Samsung ML-1740 laser. Thought the printer might be brokken.

Nope. Plugged it into my Ubuntu main terminal and it was automagically detected, loaded and the Test came out fine. Truly Plug-n-Play (TM)

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[schwit1]

This is the answer. There is no reason to use Chrome or Edge when Brave is available.

Windows, Schmindows

[Gilmoure]

It's Micro$ofts computer, not yours!