I found yet another kind of solution that works on both Linux and Windows!
I tried previous solutions posed here https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/41360557?hl=en but the crashing-within-seconds-after-starting problem came back on windows despite all attempts. So I came up with a new solution.
This new method works on both windows and linux:
Step 1: turn off your internet
Step 2: open your chrome browser (it should stay open with the internet off) and go to manage extensions
Step 3: in the browser, remove all the extensions (some might have been newly added by chrome, namely google-suite extensions). (If you need extensions...hopefully you can re-add them after this fix...I have not tried just disabling the extension or skipping this step...that might work)
Step 4: open a file-browser and go to the "default" folder, then
Go into the "extension" folder inside that "Default" folder:
(in linux) /home/username/.config/google-chrome/Default/Extensions
(in windows) C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions
Step 5: in the extensions file folder: manually delete all the contents of the extension folder.
Do NOT delete the "default" folder itself, or the "extensions" folder (or google will just make new faulty refilled folders).
Step 6: check back and forth to make sure neither side re-filled the other with new files (make sure no new extensions were added in the browser, and no files into the folder).
Finished! You are done. The browser should be fixed now.
At least for me, this method allows me to open and log in to chrome on linux and windows without headache...problem solved for now.
(This took days and days to fix...at first I thought the problem was my hard drive...I ran SpinRite, and tried switching to a new OS (Ubuntu failed to install properly, as usual) , I went back to fedora (which always works)...then I thought maybe I had malware of some kind...thank you to all of you who posted your helpful data here!)
Also: I tried using the chrome-unstable (canary?) version in linux (as that sometimes fixes bugs and implements other (security) things still in testing...and no-go, same problem...which might suggest that a real fix to this from google isn't even in the pipeline).
(also, when I log into this help channel from different accounts...it shows different lists of posts...kind of odd)
Good luck everyone!
~ Geoffrey Gordon Ashbrook
Update: a few days after writing this my windows chrome browser started crashing again (and repeating the above solution worked). I turned off the internet-connection. I rebooted chrome (which stayed open because there was no internet) and checked the installed extensions: still none (which is good. Then I checked the...
(in windows) C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions
...extensions' folder, and it had been auto-filled with at least a dozen folders of junk. So I deleted those folders (which required closing the browser to do). And then the crashing went away again. So that is more evidence (not proof) that the problem can be caused by extensions folder related files and that deleting the contents of the folder solves the crashing problem. (note: the folder may have been re-populated with files due to some kind of delayed-sync between different instances?)
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