Fascinating! This is the error discussed in issue 672813. Could you capture a log with Process Monitor (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processmonitor.aspx) so we can possibly see why CreateProcess is failing?

How to limit what to give you? Process Monitor record everything my computer does.

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Yes, the log will be huge! Search for "Exit Status: 106". Hopefully that will find a "Process Exit" entry for chrome_installer or chrome_updater or something like that. Once you've found it, right-click on the process name and select "Include 'FOO'" (where FOO is chrome_installer or something like that). That should limit the log to showing only the process that exited with 106. Then File->Save and make sure the "Events displayed using current filter" option is selected. Thanks!

There was not FOO or anything like it

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Were you able to find an "Exit Status: 106" event? If so, what process name was the event associated with?

12:27:08.0502097	59.0.3071.109_chrome_installer.exe	8484	Process Exit		SUCCESS	Exit Status: 106, User Time: 0.0625000 seconds, Kernel Time: 0.5156250 seconds, Private Bytes: 2,326,528, Peak Private Bytes: 2,445,312, Working Set: 2,686,976, Peak Working Set: 54,661,120

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Is this what you need?

Deleted: Process Monitor.txt 136 KB

Process Monitor.txt 136 KB View Download

Yes, exactly. Thank you for that. The reason the installation fails is that some program called "TuneUp Utilities 2014" used one of the debugging facilities in Windows ("Image File Execution Options", see https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/a329t4ed.aspx) to cause itself to be launched any time a program named "setup.exe" is run. It seems that "TuneUp Utilities 2014" is no longer present at "C:\Program Files (x86)\TuneUp Utilities 2014\TUAutoReactivator64.exe", so you will find that you're unable to run any program named "setup.exe". For example, try making a copy of calc.exe named setup.exe and running it:

cd %USERPROFILE%\Desktop
copy C:\Windows\System32\calc.exe setup.exe
setup.exe

You can see this debugging configuration by running the following command from a cmd prompt:

reg query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\setup.exe" /s

I can think of two possible ways to solve the problem for you:

1. Try to uninstall "TuneUp Utilities 2014" via the normal means in the hopes that it cleans up its configuration in the registry.

2. Manually delete the registry keys that are problematic.

If you choose to go with route 2, you can run this command from an admin CMD prompt to delete the debugging configuration for "setup.exe":

reg delete "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\setup.exe"

You may wonder if it has installed itself to run for other programs as well. This command may show you the list:

reg query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options" /v Debugger /s /f TuneUp /d

We'll investigate on our side to see if there's anything we can do in Chrome to work around this issue. It's unfortunate that this hook in Windows is being abused by other software.

Thank you very much for your help in diagnosing this. Error 106 has been a mystery for a while. Thanks to you, we now know at least one cause for it.

You have just made me a happy man! This by far the best tech support I have ever gotten in my life. Thank-you :)

It was my pleasure. You've helped me diagnose a failure mode for Chrome's installer that I would likely never have figured out. A win-win! Cheers.

I'm going to mark this issue as a duplicate of the general "Fix error 106" issue. We'll try to come up with a safe way to help other users stuck in the same situation as you.

Oh, and just to be sure: you can update Chrome now, right (either via chrome://help or by running a fresh installer from google.com/chrome)? :-)

Yes I did