Bisecting might be a bit difficult due to the lack of a consistently reproducible test case (my extension has 600k users and only two of them reported the issue).

By reporting this, I was hoping that someone would recognize these symptoms and publish a fix.

I'll change the error message to be a bit more descriptive, but if this is really coming from SafeJsonParserImpl::OnConnectionError() (which make sense), theres not much we can do without a repro.

It basically means that the utility process crashed or never started..

Unable to reproduce the Issue on Win 10 using 54.0.2940.99 and latest stable 55.0.2883.75.Removed the Needs-bisect label till we have a consistent repro for the same.

Deleted: 670625_Dec_05.mp4 1.5 MB

	670625_Dec_05.mp4 1.5 MB View Download

The following revision refers to this bug:
  https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/887e54f79784fa655609c00f3f03940a043f39a8

commit 887e54f79784fa655609c00f3f03940a043f39a8
Author: pmonette <pmonette@chromium.org>
Date: Wed Dec 07 19:47:49 2016

Changed the SafeJsonParser connection error message.

The previous error message was too generic, making it harder to find the
culprit for the "Json error".

BUG= 670625 

Review-Url: https://codereview.chromium.org/2558613002
Cr-Commit-Position: refs/heads/master@{#437037}

[modify] https://crrev.com/887e54f79784fa655609c00f3f03940a043f39a8/components/safe_json/safe_json_parser_impl.cc

We can take the fix for M56, if all looks good.

Sorry if this wasn't clear but I didn't fix this. I merely changed a string.

We won't be able to fix this without a repro, as we don't know what's happening.

Just to update:

Still unable to reproduce the issue on win10 chrome version 54.0.2840.99 and 55.0.2883.75 - extensions (eg: pdf viewer) installed fine from webstore.

Removing RBS, since we need a repro for followup.

Gentle Ping!, Could anyone provide us with consistent repro steps for further triaging.

FYI, as stated in the report, I cannot personally reproduce the problem. I have only seen reports from other users.

Thank you for providing more feedback. Adding requester "tkonchada@chromium.org" for another review and adding "Needs-Review" label for tracking.

For more details visit https://www.chromium.org/issue-tracking/autotriage - Your friendly Sheriffbot

Tested in latest chrome canary #57.0.2964.0 on win 10.0 and not able to reproduce the issue.
@rob:
Could you please re-check once in latest versions and let us know the observations which would help us to triage the issue further.

Thanks in Advance.

rob@ : Could you please find out from the users if the issue is resolved, as we see an update/fix for it based on Comment # 5 above.

The patch from comment 5 landed in Chrome 57, while the current stable is 56.

The Reddit post from the initial report contains a new comment (from last month) from another user (so the issue may still be valid):

| Any update on this? I'm experiencing the same problem.

|||  As I've said in the edit, everything went back to normal the following morning. Never managed to figure out what exactly caused the problem and how it fixed itself.
||| I hope you can find a solution to this.

|||||| OK, thanks anyway

(from https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/5cr5qy/cant_install_any_extension_or_theme_image_decode/)

Thank you for providing feedback. removing "Needs-Feedback" label.

Thanks for the update.As per the above comment #15 it seems to be resolved at user's end.Closing this issue as of now, please report a new issue if you still observe it with a detailed repro steps to help further investigate.