Started getting unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited normally. (unknown error: DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist)

Question

Chrome version is recently upgraded to 108.x version and all of sudden my scripts have started failing and getting below exception:

org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited normally.
  (unknown error: DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist)
  (The process started from chrome location C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe is no longer running, so ChromeDriver is assuming that Chrome has crashed.)

I have gone through different forums but none of the solutions worked. I am running my scripts on stand alone machine with Windows 11, Java Version as 17 and below maven dependencies I am using:

  <dependencies>
<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.seleniumhq.selenium/selenium-java -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
        <artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>
        <version>3.141.59</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.testng</groupId>
        <artifactId>testng</artifactId>
        <version>7.6.1</version>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
        <dependency>
        <groupId>io.github.bonigarcia</groupId>
        <artifactId>webdrivermanager</artifactId>
        <version>5.2.1</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>

How can I resolve this issue? I have tried all the options mentioned in below question: WebDriverException: unknown error: DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist while trying to initiate Chrome Browser

I have tried all the options mentioned in below question: WebDriverException: unknown error: DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist while trying to initiate Chrome Browser

Answer 1

Did you put your class files or jar file in an external storage instead of the SSD or hard disk that originally belonged to your PC? Such as a USB storage or an SD card. Sometimes issues like your description occur in that situation.