Restore previous version of Chrome User Data in Windows 10

Hi all,

one of my Chrome extensions recently lost all its settings overnight, including a whitelist that I very heavily rely on. I'm trying to restore the User Data directory to before these settings disappeared, and indeed the Previous Versions function in Windows 10 tells me older versions are available for being restored.

However, when I try to restore these, I get an error message that reads "Restore skipped restoring the file: [entire directory] to original location." The options for Restore To and Open also greyed out. I've read many accounts of people restoring their Chrome user data using the same method, so I'm not sure why I am unable to do the same.

The directory is located in C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data, which makes me think it may possibly be a permissions issue. I've already made sure all Chrome processes are ended, but to no avail.

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated!

Thanks a lot in advance,

Segia

Hi Ken,

thank you so much for your response!

I also stumbled upon that thread, but unfortunately the option for Restore To (as well as Open) is greyed out - both here and in any random other directory.

In this User Data directory specifically, every folder so far that I've tried to restore has caused the error above, no matter how much further I drill down. In other directories (e.g. My Documents) I am able to restore files without problem.

Another thing that I noticed earlier this day is that I couldn't restore anything without my external hard drive connected, with the error message reading that was where the backup was stored. Not sure if it's relevant, but it was new information to me.

I'd be very grateful for any additional thought you might have!

Best regards,

Segia

I never manually did, but it does show that previous versions have been stored. Looking up solutions online, there's many accounts of people using Previous Versions to restore their Chrome extension settings, so I'm fairly certain it's possible.