Next, I used the registry editor to scan for all locations of Chrome in the registry. Using third-party driver installation tools is often fraught with risk.

Reminder: only go to a vendor’s site or Microsoft to update drivers. I checked to see whether the network driver on the HP Envy was up to date. (I did see that the Background Intelligent Transfer Service was set to manual so I set the service to automatic and tried again. But since Defender was installed, there was no third-party antivirus to remove. One recommendation was to uninstall the antivirus software. None of the usual recommended troubleshooting techniques to get Chrome to install worked. It turns out that Chrome registry keys had been left behind. Since the Revo uninstaller couldn’t find a past Chrome install - even though the registry keys indicated that the operating system once thought Chrome was there - I scanned the registry. I hoped to avoid doing a total reinstall, so I kept trying to clean up this clearly damaged operating system. That’s when I located evidence of a past program whose goal was to disable Microsoft Defender. Next, I tried Revo uninstaller in a vain attempt to uninstall both Fast Browser and the remnants of Chrome.

In reviewing what files were installed on the machine I found something called “Fast Browser” residing in the registry in place of the Chrome browser. (The event viewer indicated that the installation was failing, but gave no clue about why.) I downloaded both the stub installer and the enterprise installer and the installers would flash a window up, then close down and not install. Let me walk you through the sleuthing and tactics I needed to get Chrome installed a process that offers lessons for other users when seemingly good installs go bad. We needed Chrome to access some projects that demanded the Google platform. But it had one foundational problem: Google’s Chrome browser wouldn’t install. It would install updates, receive feature releases and get Office 365 click-to-run updates. I was recently assisting someone with a problem with their laptop - an HP Envy, several years old but still running Windows well enough.

Uninstall google chrome enterprise