The Unwanted Resurrection
Google Chrome has a safety mechanism designed for unexpected events like a sudden power outage or a severe system crash. When you reopen the browser after such an event, Chrome will automatically display a small pop-up bubble (or sometimes just automatically reopen tabs) offering to “Restore” the session that was lost. While this is a lifesaver if you were in the middle of important research, it is incredibly annoying if the browser crashed due to a specific heavy web page, or if you simply prefer a clean slate every time you launch the browser, regardless of how it was closed previously.
Disabling the Crash Recovery Prompt
To ensure a fresh start every time and stop Google Chrome from automatically offering to restore your session or opening tabs after a crash, you must modify how the Chrome executable launches using a command-line switch.
Because there is no simple toggle in the standard Settings menu for this specific crash behavior, you have to edit the Chrome shortcut. On Windows, locate the shortcut you use to open Chrome (e.g., on your desktop or taskbar). Right-click the shortcut and select Properties. Look for the field labelled Target. It will contain a long path to the `chrome.exe` file, enclosed in quotation marks. Place your cursor at the very end of that line, *outside* the final quotation mark. Type a single space, and then type --disable-session-crashed-bubble. Click Apply and then OK. Now, if Chrome crashes and you restart it using that specific shortcut, it will launch cleanly to your default New Tab page, completely ignoring the previous broken session.