Windows – How to stop Google Chrome from auto-pinning itself to quicklaunch in Windows 7

google-chromequicklaunchwindows 7

Google Chrome has begun an annoying habit recently of auto-pinning itself to my quicklaunch bar in Windows 7, at seemingly random times and no matter how many times I manually unpin it. It doesn't seem to be tied to automatic updates; I've noted the version and manually unpinned, and confirmed that the version is the same the next time it pins itself. I'd like to disable this behavior, but haven't found the option in Settings. Any ideas how to fix this?

My current version of Chrome is 20.0.1132.43.

Best Answer

This one was VERY tricky, since Google Chrome doesn't use any of the conventional means to pin an icon to the taskbar and the desktop. However, there is a specific area of the registry that, if deleted, prevents this behavior. The contents of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components{8A69D345-D564-463c-AFF1-A69D9E530F96} in .reg file format are:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{8A69D345-D564-463c-AFF1-A69D9E530F96}]
@="Google Chrome"
"StubPath"="\"C:\\Program Files\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\24.0.1312.52\\Installer\\setup.exe\" --configure-user-settings --verbose-logging --system-level --multi-install --chrome"
"Localized Name"="Google Chrome"
"IsInstalled"=dword:00000001
"Version"="24,0,0,0"

IF YOU DELETE THIS ENTIRE SECTION:

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{8A69D345-D564-463c-AFF1-A69D9E530F96}]

...then Chrome stops pinning itself to everything with every new user. In testing, the only ill effect is that it seems you will need to add a shortcut to Chrome to the Start Menu (I guess the setup.exe program adds the shortcut as well).

Hope this helps...

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