As it’s catching up the browser market, Chrome is one of the easiest installable browser. It doesn’t require any administrator rights for the end user as it get’s installed to a user profile folder instead of %programFiles% path. Below is the command line where from Google Updater launches the Google Installer.
"C:Users<username>AppDataLocalGoogleUpdateGoogleUpdate.exe" /handoff "appguid={8A69D345-D564-463C-AFF1-A69D9E530F96}&iid={FDC46DEC-52EC-57D4-E24D-40D463E18969}&lang=en-IN&browser=2&usagestats=0&appname=Google%20Chrome&needsadmin=false" /installsource oneclick
Thus, the main window/process of the Chrome browser runs from below location:
"C:Users<username>AppDataLocalGoogleChromeApplicationchrome.exe"
Tabs get executed with below command line parameters by default:
"C:Users<username>AppDataLocalGoogleChromeApplicationchrome.exe" –type=renderer –lang=en-US –force-fieldtest=CacheSize/CacheSizeGroup_0/ConnCountImpact/conn_count_6/ConnnectBackupJobs/ConnectBackupJobsEnabled/DnsImpact/max_500ms_queue_prefetch/DnsParallelism/parallel_14/GlobalSdch/global_enable_sdch/IdleSktToImpact/idle_timeout_60/Prefetch/ContentPrefetchDisabled/ProxyConnectionImpact/proxy_connections_32/SSLFalseStart/FalseStart_enabled/SpdyCwnd/cwnd16/SpdyImpact/npn_with_spdy/ –channel=5736.057E4300.822057191 /prefetch:3
When run in incognito mode, it invokes a child process with below parameter change:
"C:Users<username>AppDataLocalGoogleChromeApplicationchrome.exe" –type=renderer –disable-databases –lang=en-US –force-fieldtest=CacheSize/CacheSizeGroup_0/ConnCountImpact/conn_count_6/ConnnectBackupJobs/ConnectBackupJobsEnabled/DnsImpact/max_2s_queue_prefetch/DnsParallelism/parallel_7/GlobalSdch/global_enable_sdch/IdleSktToImpact/idle_timeout_60/Prefetch/ContentPrefetchDisabled/ProxyConnectionImpact/proxy_connections_32/SSLFalseStart/FalseStart_disabled/SpdyCwnd/cwndMin16/SpdyImpact/npn_with_spdy/ –channel=6476.05889180.792548923 /prefetch:3
- Even opening up a new Windows from Start Programs, yet runs under the main process which got started first.
- You can’t run Chrome for multi-users (say via runas) in a single logon session
- Chrome saves it’s current user profile settings in “C:Users<username>AppDataLocalGoogleChromeUser DataDefault”
- A debug log file is maintened at C:Users<username>AppDataLocalGoogleChromeUser Datachrome_debug.log
- Chrome saves much of it’s configuration files in SQLite Format
- Some of the critical files “…User DataPreferences” & “…User DataBookmarks” are maintained in a JSON alike format