I recently fell victim to a malware attack that left me unable to access any of my Chrome extensions. Although I can confirm that the extensions are still stored in the user data folder, the extensions tab in Chrome appears completely blank. I've already run Malwarebytes and it claims to have removed the malware, but I'm still stuck without my extensions. I even attempted to restore my Chrome user folder from a backup, but that didn't solve the problem. What can I do to regain access to my Chrome extensions?
1 Answer
This happened to me too after a malware hijack. It turns out the malware set some Chrome policies that block extensions. Here’s a quick fix:
1. Check if Chrome is managed by visiting chrome://policy. If you see policies like ExtensionSettings or ExtensionInstallBlocklist, you know the malware left those behind.
2. To remove them, if you're on Windows, close Chrome and delete the keys in Registry Editor found at:
- HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarePoliciesGoogle
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesGoogle
Then reopen chrome://policy and click Reload policies.
- For macOS, go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Profiles and remove any suspicious profiles.
3. It’s also a good idea to reset Chrome settings to restore everything back to default.
4. After doing all that, you should be able to re-enable your extensions or reinstall them from the Chrome Web Store. If you’re still having issues, creating a new Chrome profile might help too!
Good news! I managed to get Brave working again just by resetting the settings. That might be similar to what worked for Chrome.
Thanks, that really helped! I found a policy called 'Manifest2' causing the issue. Do you know how to fix a similar problem for Brave? It’s giving me an error about loading extensions.