Windows 10: Google Chrome Taskbar Icon Opening Too Many New Instances

I don't even know how to succinctly summarize this problem so I couldn't even google search it.

Both my PCs run Windows 10 Pro. On one of them, when you click a the Google Chrome taskbar button...the button disappears and becomes a Chrome program instance which you can raise and lower. That one seems to be working normally as that's how it always works for me on windows 10 pro on my various computers.

The other one however, remains static so when I click the Chrome icon....a new instance will open to the right where there were there are no icons, and the Chrome icon will remain in it's spot on the left. The problem is if I'm not careful I'll click the wrong one and I'll have 2 instances of chrome open. This happened several times until I realized why it was happening.

I don't want to Uninstall chrome because I just setup this computer and it was a pain in the neck getting all my content onto chrome. For some reason even tho it's "syncing" to my Chrome account none of the information was there such as autofill and passwords. So I had to get all my content back on there it would be a huge pain uninstalling and losing all that info.

How can I fix this?

:)

 

WIndows 10 recently started duplicating pinned icons, happens on multiple machines

This started happening in the last week. I have pinned programs to my taskbar. Normally, if I open the program, it highlights the pinned icon to tell me the window is open. If I open multiple instances, then it kind of "overlays" the pinned icon so I
can see there are multiple instances open.

But recently, the behavior changed. When I click on the pinned icon, the running instance is represented by a second instance of the icon that is appended to the right of all my pinned icons. So now I have two icons, and the clutter begins. When I get
many windows open, to navigate between them, I have to be sure to find the right-most icon on the taskbar, or else it opens a new instance of that window.

I have google searched for this behavior, and I see it used to happen on Windows 7, and on Windows 10 back in 2015. So it seems this bug has crept back in to the current windows.

I am running a licensed version of Windows 10 Pro, Version 1709, build 16299.309

 

Taskbar Icon Combine and Hide Feature fails in Google Chrome After Latest W10 Update

Hello all.

I recently updated my original Windows 10 OS with the latest update that rolled out last week. I have had no issues running Windows 10 on my original Windows 8.1 laptop.

I use Google Chrome as my default internet browser. For years I have enjoyed the taskbar feature that allows you to combine and hide the titles of multiple open internet pages. What I generally do is run Google Chrome and then open a separate window in
Google Chrome Incognito Mode. In the past all I needed to do was hover over the Google Icon in the taskbar and thumbnails of both open instances of Chrome would pop up. And I could simply click on one or the other thumbnail and would be taken to that opened
page.

After this latest W10 I have lost this feature. If I have my taskbar properties set to "combine and hide" icons....I can still hover over the Google icon in taskbar and both thumbnails of open windows will pop up.....but if I click on the window that is
NOT the current larger screen already open....nothing happens. In other words I can no longer toggle between instances of Chrome. I have set and reset this setting. I have verified that I have the lasted updated version of Chrome installed. What I have
to do now is set taskbar properties to NEVER combine. This means when I open a regular Chrome browser window and then an Incognito browser window...I can see both but I have to literally minimize one of the other to have the alternate page become current.
I have properties set to NEVER combine and even this setting is not functioning correctly. I can't just click on this or that open window icon in taskbar...I actually have to click on whichever window I want to view but I have to click on it 2 or 3 times
before that page will become current.

Anyone have any suggestions? I have never had issues with any of my Microsoft products and this is just so inefficient and annoying.

HELP?

 

Hi d2produce. Welcome to the TenForums @d2produce

Right click in a clear area of the task bar, then click on "taskbar settings", scroll down on right hand side, there is a section "Combine Taskbar buttons. Is your set to "Always"?


Ken

 

I actually figured it out. It wasn't a taskbar issue, it was a Google chrome issue. After I made this post, for the heck of it I copy and pasted my topic title in google and found a bunch of relevant results. It is a Chrome issue and what I had to do was go to Users/(my username)/Appdata/Local/Google/Chrome and delete the "User Data" folder. The trick is, which I had to figure out myself, is that in Windows 10, the Appdata folder is Hidden, so first I temporarily set Show Hidden Items and the AppData folder was still hidden. So then I did a Search on C drive for AppData and waited for all the results which there were a ton of and I scanned the Folder paths and there it was C:/Users/AppData. I found it very weird that I had to use this method to find it. But there it was, went to Local the Google, deleted User Data and it works fine now.

 

Thanks for posting your solution. When you get an opportunity if you could mark your thread solved others will find information helpful.

Ken