How To Disable Chrome Auto-Update for Test Environments

How To Disable Chrome Auto-Update for Test Environments

Problem

Google Chrome will auto-update when a new version becomes available.  When this occurs, the Chrome Webdriver being used by Cycle will no longer match the version of Chrome and may become unstable.

Solution

To prevent unexpected issues, Chrome auto-updates should be disabled in test environments.  

Step 1: Disable Google Update service

Open the Windows System Configuration application (msconfig.exe).

Within the Services tab, find and uncheck Google Update Service (gupdatem), then select Apply.

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Step 2: Disable Scheduled Google Updates

Open Task Scheduler, under Active Tasks, double click the task GoogleUpdateTaskMachineUA. 

On this page, disable both GoogleUpdateTaskMachineCore and GoogleUpdateTaskMachineUA.

 mceclip1.png

Note: Keeping Chrome up to date can be important for system security.  Once the newest release of Chrome has been confirmed to be stable with Cycle, Chrome, and the ChromeDriver for Cycle should be updated.

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