Solved Vivaldi Crash On Load: How Can I MANUALLY Remove Culprit Extension

slysnake96

Vivaldi Crash On Load: How Can I MANUALLY Remove Culprit Extension

Vivaldi crashes on loading it so I am NOT able to disable extensions.
If I add the argument --disable-extensions Vivaldi will load up perfectly fine but I cannot uninstall any broken extensions.

I have used:
--disable-extensions-except="c:\Users\ME\AppData\Local\Vivaldi\User Data\Default\Extensions\ExtensionFolderHere\ExtensionVersionHere"
and have narrowed down 2 potential culprit extensions but sadly I cannot remove them due to the browser crashing if I try to load it normally to uninstall them.

I need to know how I can remove the extensions manually using Windows Explorer and deleting or changing files etc.

I am tech savvy enough to know where to go and how to do what I might need, but I do not know what files to delete or edit etc.

I am a PC power user and I have everything set exactly the way I want it, I also suffer from severe anxiety when I have deal with big changes so I would be very appreciative of any help that doesn't tell me to uninstall and start from scratch all over again.

It has taken me over a year to get all my extensions, settings and visuals etc. working the way I want.

Thanks in advance.
Sly

Pathduck

@slysnake96 Just deleting the folder is not enough unfortunately, you'll need to manually edit a file, Chromium base does not make this easy.

Close Vivaldi
Find the file Secure Preferences in your profile
Open it in a good JSON editor
JSONEdit: https://tomeko.net/software/JSONedit/
Under Root > Extensions > Settings find the culprit ID
Delete the entry and save the file
Delete the extension ID folder
Start Vivaldi

mib2berlin

@slysnake96
Hi, does this happen after an update?
Then it is easy. If not:

If you know which extension is the problem search for the ID in the Web Store and delete the folder, ID: fihnjjcciajhdojfnbdddfaoknhalnja
for example.
The folders are in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Vivaldi\Default\Extensions

You can move all extensions to a save place and copy it back one for one, it is a bit of work but if you need a year to setup a browser it is maybe 15 minutes or so.

I guess it is not a very clean solution because there are other extension data but should work.

Cheers, mib
EDIT: It does not really work, the extension is greyed out but still there. May be Vivaldi start with the removed folder, no idea, I can test this.

slysnake96

@mib2berlin said in Vivaldi Crash On Load: How Can I MANUALLY Remove Culprit Extension:

@slysnake96
Hi, does this happen after an update?
Then it is easy. If not:

If you know which extension is the problem search for the ID in the Web Store and delete the folder, ID: fihnjjcciajhdojfnbdddfaoknhalnja
for example.
The folders are in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Vivaldi\Default\Extensions

You can move all extensions to a save place and copy it back one for one, it is a bit of work but if you need a year to setup a browser it is maybe 15 minutes or so.

I guess it is not a very clean solution because there are other extension data but should work.

Cheers, mib
EDIT: It does not really work, the extension is greyed out but still there. May be Vivaldi start with the removed folder, no idea, I can test this.

Hi thanks for the advice,

My browser and PC have not been updated for a couple of days now and my browser was working fine today until the crash, I am on the latest version of Vivaldi.

I have already tried removing all extension folders to a safe place but it seems like Vivaldi is still recognising some kind of residual files so it still thinks they are loaded even when the files are all removed.

I believe that whatever the left over extension data is, that's what is probably causing my issues.

mib2berlin

@slysnake96
Thats what I feared, the other data is stored in a several data bases. No idea how to handle these.
I hope another user step by to help here.
There was an update today to 5.3, may you try to install as standalone install and copy the whole profile folder over.
The Chromium version of 5.2 is old, 5.3 is on 102 now and if a extension was updated it may not work on Chromium 100 anymore.

https://vivaldi.com/blog/desktop/minor-update-5-3/

Cheers, mib

slysnake96

@mib2berlin said in Vivaldi Crash On Load: How Can I MANUALLY Remove Culprit Extension:

@slysnake96
Thats what I feared, the other data is stored in a several data bases. No idea how to handle these.
I hope another user step by to help here.
There was an update today to 5.3, may you try to install as standalone install and copy the whole profile folder over.
The Chromium version of 5.2 is old, 5.3 is on 102 now and if a extension was updated it may not work on Chromium 100 anymore.

https://vivaldi.com/blog/desktop/minor-update-5-3/

Cheers, mib

Thanks but I have already tried that and I am already on 5.3, I am using it right now with the --disable-extensions argument and it works fine, so all I know is that my issue is caused by an extension and or that extensions data and sadly ther is no way to just delete the extension and all the extensions data fully.

Pathduck

@slysnake96 Just deleting the folder is not enough unfortunately, you'll need to manually edit a file, Chromium base does not make this easy.

Close Vivaldi
Find the file Secure Preferences in your profile
Open it in a good JSON editor
JSONEdit: https://tomeko.net/software/JSONedit/
Under Root > Extensions > Settings find the culprit ID
Delete the entry and save the file
Delete the extension ID folder
Start Vivaldi

slysnake96

@Pathduck said in Vivaldi Crash On Load: How Can I MANUALLY Remove Culprit Extension:

@slysnake96 Just deleting the folder is not enough unfortunately, you'll need to manually edit a file, Chromium base does not make this easy.

Close Vivaldi

Find the file Secure Preferences in your profile

Open it in a good JSON editor
JSONEdit: https://tomeko.net/software/JSONedit/

Under Root > Extensions > Settings find the culprit ID

Delete the entry and save the file

Delete the extension folder

Start Vivaldi

Thank you for the help,

I will give that a try and report back on how it went.

Thanks again and I hope this will fix the issues.

slysnake96

@Pathduck said in Vivaldi Crash On Load: How Can I MANUALLY Remove Culprit Extension:

@slysnake96 Just deleting the folder is not enough unfortunately, you'll need to manually edit a file, Chromium base does not make this easy.

Close Vivaldi

Find the file Secure Preferences in your profile

Open it in a good JSON editor
JSONEdit: https://tomeko.net/software/JSONedit/

Under Root > Extensions > Settings find the culprit ID

Delete the entry and save the file

Delete the extension ID folder

Start Vivaldi

Ok so I tried that at first, to the letter and sadly it didn't work... However...

I then proceeded to delete all extensions from the list in the JSON and then saved a backup of all extension folders just in case.

I then deleted all extension folders and started Vivaldi again and Vivaldi automatically restored all of my extensions and is working again now and displaying all of my previous extensions even the ones I thought were bad.

Thank you so much you are a life saver and saved me from have a complete breakdown, as mentioned before I have severe anxiety when it comes to big changes and I was close to my wits end, heavens forbid but I even considered resorting back to Google Chrome, I would never have been able to fix this without your directions on where to look and what to do.

Again thank you sooo very much.

I hope you have an amazing rest of your day/night and now I am going to go relax and de-stress myself after all of this.

Many thanks.
Sly

Pathduck

@slysnake96 Happy to help

Thing is, a lot of those extensions are system/internal extension like Web Store, PiP, Crypto Token, Themes, PDF Reader, Hangouts - even Vivaldi itself is an "extension" (ID: mpognobbkildjkofajifpdfhcoklimli).

So surprised that didn't bork your install totally... but possibly they are "important" enough to be automatically re-installed if missing. I would still check if this important stuff still works.

Check also vivaldi://system, expand Extensions and see what you have there.

My new suspicion: You had sync enabled, causing all extensions (also non-system) to be redownloaded fresh on start, that's why it was hard to remove. I've not tested my method with Sync enabled, and I suspect you'd need to disable Sync first - hard to do without being able to start the browser at all - and not sure if --disable-sync works for Vivaldi Sync...
(EDIT: it also works for Vivaldi Sync )

slysnake96

@Pathduck Honestly everything seems to be working perfectly fine again, just need to re-do some of my extension settings but they aren't super important ones to me so I'm not too bothered, plus I make settings exports on all my important extensions.