Google Chrome unable to navigate to specified URL when triggered from Selenium

Question

I have an automation framework developed around Selenium-WebDriver which launches Chrome and navigates to specified URL and performs specified automation. When I commissioned the framework to perform a long task and left it overnight to run (Run was not successful). The following day when I tried to re-run a new set of Tests, Selenium was able to fire Chrome but the Browser would not navigate to the specified URL. The following is the detailed stack trace.

Starting ChromeDriver (v2.7.236900) on port 60678
Exception in thread "main" org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: unknown error: cannot get automation extension from unknown error: page could not be found: chrome-extension://aapnijgdinlhnhlmodcfapnahmbfebeb/_generated_background_page.html
(Session info: chrome=41.0.2272.118)
(Driver info: chromedriver=2.7.236900,platform=Windows NT 6.3 x86_64)   (WARNING: The server did not provide any stacktrace information)
Command duration or timeout: 10.12 seconds
Build info: version: '2.24.1', revision: '17205', time: '2012-06-19 16:53:24'
System info: os.name: 'Windows 8.1', os.arch: 'x86', os.version: '6.3', java.version: '1.8.0_25'
Driver info: driver.version: RemoteWebDriver
Session ID: a2fafed66d51994e3ef57bada99fddbf
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ErrorHandler.createThrowable(ErrorHandler.java:188)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ErrorHandler.throwIfResponseFailed(ErrorHandler.java:145)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.execute(RemoteWebDriver.java:472)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver$RemoteWebDriverOptions$RemoteWindow.maximize(RemoteWebDriver.java:683)
at com.gravitant.utils.Util.launchBrowser(Util.java:1711)
at com.gravitant.test.RunTests.start(RunTests.java:147)
at com.gravitant.test.RunTests.main(RunTests.java:80)

This is the second time I am facing the same issue. When I tried to google search the error I was able find this particular forum. I tried to re-download Chrome_driver but it did not help. Restarting the system did not help either. I double checked the code and all the set-up but nothing was changed. Curiously I was able to stumble upon a curious solution.

Solution - Re-installing Chrome Browser solved the issue. I was able to run the tests perfectly.

I am curious to understand why this was and what might have caused chrome to behave so oddly.

Answer 1

In my case, the chrome browser version and chromedriver versions were incompatible. Chrome updated automatically from 56 to 57 and my chromedriver version was 2.27. The 2 issues throwing 'org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: unknown error: cannot get automation extension' error (when maximizing the browser and when taking screenshots), where fixed after updating to cromdriver version 2.28.

Answer 2

The issue here is, Selenium-WebDriver is unable to launch the installed 3rd Party Extensions in chrome. I encountered the issue today as well, so instead of re-installing google chrome, I deleted all the extensions I had installed on Chrome. I have a couple of "Add Blocker" extensions installed.