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Microsoft AI IT

Windows Parental Controls Are Blocking Chrome 39

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
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."

Windows Parental Controls Are Blocking Chrome More | Reply

Windows Parental Controls Are Blocking Chrome

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  • 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: (Score:3)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      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

      • 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: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by rudy_wayne ( 414635 )

      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: (Score:3)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 )
      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.

      • Re:Thats weird and hilarious (Score:4, Informative)

        by narcc ( 412956 ) on Friday June 20, 2025 @04:07PM (#65464257) Journal

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

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

      • 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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by duk242 ( 1412949 )
      MA! GET THE CAMERA! I'M FAMOUS! So, the issue is that if you have the "Filter bad links" thing turned on, the filtering only works in Edge. To stop the kids from getting around this, it automatically blocks the other browsers. Microsoft changing it was actually just "fixing a bug", as Chrome was always supposed to be blocked. Anyway, it was annoying and having to tell students to go tell their parents that they have to log in to their family account thing and change the settings and that they can only us

  • ...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

  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you let your children use Chrome you are a terrible parent.

  • That's an excellent start. (Score:3)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Friday June 20, 2025 @02:28PM (#65464125)

    Now get it to block Windows.

  • Blocking Chrome with Parental Controls (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Friday June 20, 2025 @02:56PM (#65464163)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Sique ( 173459 )
      And this is different from Windows 11 Home exactly how?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        Microsoft doesn't have access to Chrome's internals like they do Windows components. The only thing they could do is block it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Sique ( 173459 )
          So you are telling me, that Windows Parental Controls throws out a competitor for serving adds?
  • 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]
  • “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.”

  • 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)

  • It's Micro$ofts computer, not yours!

  • On iOS Chrome simply bypasses parental controls, rendering them useless. So I guess Microsoft is trying to increase the usefulness of its parental controls.
  • This the fifth, fourth instance of Microsoft deciding which browser their users can operate. The silence from the FTC is deafening. Since cloud services are designed for the Chrome browser, it will be interesting to see if corporations and schools change to Brave/Vivaldi (and learn the ubiquitous existence of tracking cookies). Or, they replace the Microsoft shit-show of customer-abuse and privacy invasion with Linux.
  • Pretty sure this is not new. I bought my daughter a new PC about a year ago, and experienced these exact problems with Chrome refusing to stay running. After a lot of reinstalls I finally realized I had at some point in the past added her account to a parental control group under my Microsoft account. Problem was for the life of me I could not get her off that group or change the settings to allow Chrome to run. In the end I had to setup that PC to run with my account, and suddenly Chrome runs without probl
  • Seems that Microsoft in their infinite wisdom (or lack thereoff) has blocked chrome.exe to force the use of their own Edge browser, a simple fix is renaming chrome.exe to chrome1.exe and it works fine.
  • Google puts a lot of work into stopping third party processes and weird uses of APIs from affecting the correct operation of their browser. If any violations are found, Chrome will hiri-kiri itself. Plenty of legitimate tools will cause Chrome to close itself, and since no other browser is impacted, I suspect this is just something different about how other Chromium forks work compared to official Google Chrome, since they tend to add new security features a little later.

  • Isn't the complete goal of parental control filters to filter what one browser can access and block all other browsers so the filter cannot be circumvented?

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