My mother called me that her computer was sending Facebook messages to her friends and posting strange Google Drive videos on her Facebook wall with her profile image as the placeholder image of the video. Plus she can’t remove the videos.
So I used Teamviewer to help her (we are 500km of distance) and located some malware doing this.
Here’s how I solved Chrome extensions tab not opening:
- First what I did was remove all Facebook apps she had allowed to work on her profile. I can’t trace which of them did what, but this is an essential step I always do if there is anything wrong in Facebook. To see what apps you have installed in Facebook see here.
- Then I tried to see all the extensions / addons she had in Chrome. When navigating to More tools -> Extensions (the address chrome://extensions/) in Chrome the extensions window opened but automatically shut in 0,5 seconds. Now I realised it’s malware and it’s in Chrome.
- I downloaded a tool called Chrome Cleanup Tool from Google. This will reset all your Chrome settings, remove all addons and clean the browser up totally. Installed it, run it, Chrome was clean.
- To be sure, I also downloaded and run AdwCleaner from Toolslib to check for any other potentially unwanted softwares. AdwCleaner has proved usable and effective for me many other times before.
After scanning the computer it found some PUP-s and I hit Clean to remove them all. After this a reboot was required.
Once logged back in my mother was able to delete the malicious video from her Facebook homepage. Also she told me all of this had happened once she clicked on a similar video one of her friends had had on her timeline.
Make sure you always click on things you believe are real, but this one had disguised itsself really well.
Hope this helps anyone to remove the nasty problem where Chrome extensions page is not opening.