Developers temporarily disable feature causing “Aw, Snap!” crashes in Chrome 78

The latest update of the Chrome browser for Windows has been a bit of a mess as users have been battling “Aw, Snap!” crashes due to outdated third-party code not being compatible with Chrome’s sandboxing process. On the bright side, the problem isn’t a bug. However, it does prevent many popular security applications such as Symantec Endpoint from executing their commands which results in the crash leaving Chrome useless.

Unfortunately, until these third-party applications update their code, there is no way to prevent the crashes apart from disabling the app or the Chrome rendering process at the center of the issue. Chromium developers have decided to cut this off at the pass by going ahead and doing the latter across the board.

Disable renderer CIG temporarily.

This is to allow time for third party vendors who currently inject
into Chrome renderer processes to update their software.This will be re-enabled in a future release of Chrome.

CR Bug Tracker

While it stinks that Chrome is having to take a step backward from a security standpoint, it is a necessary regression to give developers time to update their applications to ensure compatibility. The good news about this fix is that it should be immediate. The Chrome team is able to revert this feature on the server-side so that no actual update to the browser is required. Closing out your browser entirely should prevent any future “Aw, Snaps!” If you are still experiencing the issue, please submit feedback to developers by heading to the settings menu>help>report an issue.

For the Chromium-based version of Edge, Microsoft reportedly disabled this feature a few weeks back. So, you shouldn’t be experiencing any of the symptoms associated with this issue.