Quick answer: STATUS_STACK_BUFFER_OVERRUN means a driver or extension corrupted the stack — kill all extensions first, then update or roll back your GPU driver, then reset the profile if it still crashes.
I've seen this one pop up more times than I can count, and it's almost never the browser itself. The error code is 0xc0000409 on Windows, and it shows up as a hard crash — the tab goes gray, or the whole browser process dies. What's happening under the hood is that something the browser loaded (a DLL, an extension, a GPU shim) wrote past the end of a stack buffer. Windows detects it and kills the process immediately. That's why you don't get a nice error page — just a dead window.
Two things trigger it most often. First, a third-party extension that does funny things with native messaging or injection. Second, an outdated or broken GPU driver — Nvidia's 472.x branch had a nasty run of this in 2021, and Intel's integrated drivers on 11th-gen laptops have caused it too. If you recently installed a Chromium update and the error started the same day, suspect an extension that hasn't kept up.
Fix 1: Kill extensions in one shot
Don't waste time disabling extensions one at a time. Rename the Extensions folder and let Chrome rebuild it. Close Chrome fully first.
taskkill /f /im chrome.exe
ren "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions" Extensions.old
For Edge, swap the path:
ren "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\Extensions" Extensions.old
Relaunch. If it stops crashing, you know an extension is the cause. Reinstall them from the store one at a time — I usually tell people to skip anything that isn't from a major vendor, because half the crash reports I've chased trace back to some random coupon extension.
Fix 2: Update or roll back the GPU driver
Open chrome://gpu and check the driver version. If it's more than six months behind, update. If it updated recently and the crash started right after, roll back. Nvidia users can grab older WHQL drivers from their archive; AMD users can find previous Adrenalin versions in the support site's past releases section. On Intel integrated graphics, let Windows Update handle it or grab the OEM package — the generic Intel one sometimes conflicts with the laptop vendor's build.
While you're in there, try disabling hardware acceleration as a quick test. Settings → System → toggle off "Use graphics acceleration when available." If the crash goes away, the driver is the culprit, and you can decide whether to live with software rendering or fix the driver properly.
Fix 3: Reset the profile
A corrupt profile can do this too, especially if the crash happens on startup before any page loads. Make a new profile as a test:
chrome.exe --user-data-dir="C:\Temp\chrome_test"
If the fresh profile runs fine, export your bookmarks and passwords (both have export options in the settings) and rebuild from scratch. Yes, it's annoying. It's also faster than trying to surgically remove whatever's corrupted.
Fix 4: Check for third-party injection
Antivirus suites, password managers with browser plugins, and "PC optimizer" tools all hook into Chrome and Edge. Bitdefender and Kaspersky have both shipped updates that caused this in the past. Uninstall them temporarily and see if the crash stops. Malwarebytes in particular has a real-time browser protection module that's been known to conflict after a Chromium point release.
You can list loaded modules in Process Explorer (Sysinternals) while Chrome is running — anything that isn't signed by Google or Microsoft is worth a hard look.
Alternative fixes if none of that works
- Run
sfc /scannowandDISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth— a corrupted system DLL can trigger this on launch. - Check Windows Event Viewer under Application logs for the faulting module name. That tells you the actual DLL, which saves a lot of guessing.
- Roll back the browser. Chrome and Edge both have older installers floating around, and a specific version may have a bug that's already patched in a later build — or vice versa.
- Switch to a different channel temporarily (Chrome Beta or Dev) to confirm whether it's version-specific.
Prevention
Keep extensions to a minimum and only from vendors you'd trust with your data anyway. Update your GPU driver when a new major branch drops, but don't chase every minor release — wait a week and see if the forums light up with complaints. And when Chrome or Edge prompts you to relaunch for an update, do it. Most of these crashes get fixed upstream within a couple of point releases, and the people still hitting them are the ones who haven't restarted the browser in three weeks.