The “Error Code: STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION” error can affect any Chromium-based browser, including Edge, Opera, Google Chrome, and others. Technically, it means that the browser, or one of its extensions, is trying to access a memory area that either does not exist or cannot be accessed because the application does not have sufficient permissions.
This error is also quite common among owners of parsing scripts that use headless browsers and web-driver libraries such as Puppeteer, Selenium, Playwright, and similar tools.
Below, we will look at the main causes of this error, as well as possible workarounds and ways to fix the problem.
Sometimes the “STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION” error is displayed with the code 0xc0000005, and sometimes it appears as “Aw, Snap! STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION.” The most likely causes are the following:
Each type of problem requires its own response methods and specific technical solutions.
We will describe the methods for fixing the “STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION” error in order of how easy they are to implement.
Select the shortcut you use to launch your browser. Right-click it and choose Properties. In the Target field, add the following flag:
--no-sandbox
Then launch the browser.
If there is no shortcut, for example, if the browser is pinned to the taskbar, you can create one again. Go to the browser’s installation folder, find the main executable file, such as browser.exe, and use the right-click menu to send it to the desktop:
Now you can add your custom flag to the shortcut.
Browser developers do not recommend using a browser with the sandbox permanently disabled. However, if you are working with a parser, this is one of the first ways to optimize RAM usage.
Example of launching a browser instance through the Selenium web driver:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
# Create an options object
options = Options()
# Add the flag to disable the sandbox
options.add_argument("--no-sandbox")Hardware acceleration makes the browser use the graphics card, or GPU, instead of rendering everything through the CPU. On older PCs, conflicts with GPU memory may occur quite often.
Hardware acceleration can be disabled either at the browser level or through the GPU configuration utility.
The simplest option is to do it through the standard browser settings:
If the browser does not launch at all or crashes immediately, start it with a forced hardware acceleration disabling flag through a shortcut:
For variety, here is an example for web drivers used in headless parsing mode — this time with Puppeteer in Node.js:
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');
(async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
args: [
'--disable-gpu',
'--no-sandbox' // also disabling the sandbox just in case
]
});
const page = await browser.newPage();
// ...
})();In modern versions of Chrome, the --disable-gpu flag does not always disable acceleration completely. That is why many parser developers also add the following flags to make sure:
If the problem is caused by a specific extension, the simplest approach is to disable all extensions first, then enable them one by one and check whether the error appears again.
To disable extensions:
If the browser does not launch at all, you can try removing the extensions manually. They are located in your user directory:
C:\Users\USER_NAME\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions
Resetting settings at the profile level may help if disabling extensions did not solve the problem.
Not all Chromium-based browsers support multiple profiles. If your browser does not have this feature, you can manually delete all user data. It is better to copy the folder first, so you can quickly restore everything later if needed.
User data is usually stored here:
C:\Users\[Your_User_Name]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data
Perfect proxies for accessing valuable data from around the world.
Here, everything depends on what exactly you use on your device. Possible sources of conflict include:
At this point, the simple solutions end. The next methods are more complex and usually require noticeably more time and effort.
Ideally, reinstall the browser without extensions and without synchronization. It is important that the browser is completely “clean” so the test is reliable. If the error appears again, the problem is either in the browser itself or at the hardware / operating system level.
To rule out the browser completely, try different versions from different release branches and builds: earlier versions, newer versions, stable versions, and so on.
As a reminder, the STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION error may also occur because of driver conflicts.
Make sure you have the latest stable driver version installed for your graphics card — both integrated and dedicated, if your device has both.
You should not install the newest drivers blindly or use drivers from unverified sources.
If the official manufacturer driver is causing problems, try rolling it back to a version from the official Microsoft catalog. It can be installed automatically or manually through Windows Update or Device Manager. In Windows Update, check the Optional updates section.
In some especially difficult cases, you may need to boot the operating system in Safe Mode and remove drivers using special utilities such as Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU).
If your device has several graphics cards, make sure the browser is launched using the integrated GPU. Rendering switching may be controlled by the GPU configuration utility, for example, NVIDIA Control Panel:
If RAM is faulty, the STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION error may appear randomly — when data reaches a damaged memory sector or when RAM usage becomes very high.
Windows has a built-in diagnostic tool:
The utility will offer two options: run the check immediately, in which case the computer will restart automatically, or run it the next time the computer starts, so you can choose when to reboot it.
Instead of the built-in utility, you can use third-party tools, preferably from bootable media. The most popular free option is MemTest86.
This utility can be found in Linux distributions or in special system recovery ISO images, such as SystemRescue.
This is the “heavy artillery” option if none of the methods above helped. A full reinstall usually means losing user data and spending time installing all your applications from scratch. Even if you already have all the necessary installation packages available, this can take more than an hour.
A less drastic option is to check all Windows system files first. Use the following commands:
Recently, Google Chrome removed manual proxy configuration, so proxies can now be connected either at the operating system level, through dedicated software, or through specialized browser extensions.
Both options operate at a low level in order to intercept and redirect traffic. Because of this, some solutions may conflict with Chrome rendering and, as a result, cause a memory access violation with the STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION error.
And if you are writing your own parser that uses headless Chrome, the probability of this error increases significantly: no large-scale data collection is possible without proxies.
The possible solutions for the STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION error when working through proxies are similar to the methods described above:
Be sure to use high-quality proxies, such as Froxy. Our rotation is performed on the service side, and you configure the logic through the control panel for each individual port. As a result, there is no need to use any additional proxy rotation software. You only need to route browser traffic through the proxy. Even simple proxy extensions or libraries designed for web drivers are enough for this:
In Playwright, you can use the built-in sync_api through sync_playwright or async_playwright.
The “Error Code: STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION” error can occur for different reasons, but browser extensions or Chrome’s built-in sandbox are most often to blame.
If you are involved in parsing, the problem can usually be solved by using special flags and launch parameters for all headless Chrome instances. We have shown above what to add, where to add it, and how to use it.
The most difficult cases may require a full browser reinstall, operating system reinstall, or even replacement of RAM modules or graphics cards.