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I copied my entire computer to a hd and reformat it (to the same OS and hardware). I'm trying to restore my chrome. There's a few usernames and passwords I don't remember and I would prefer not to log into everything (I'm currently using firefox). I copied C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default from my backup to my current installation. The bookmarks and history looks intact but all my logins are not (facebook, netflix, hotmail, etc). I tried replacing C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome with the one in my backup and still I don't have my logins. I rather not lose those accounts. Does anyone have an idea of what I can do? Also I have an old laptop I might replace so if a solution requires access to the old OS I can use it for that

2 Answers2

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It appears that you need Windows to decrypt the passwords stored in Chrome, since they're encrypted with the Windows API CryptProtectData using at least the old windows login password.

Duplicating the Windows API CryptUnprotectData with your old login password would theoretically work, but that may need some other data stored somewhere on windows and doesn't appear to be common knowledge (I didn't find any mention of how to do it easily from a search).

If you can still boot the old OS, then you should be able to just run Chrome there, but don't login or sync anything. (I wouldn't want to send all my logins & passwords to Google by syncing, I'm sure it's their policy that "at google we'll never read your passwords" etc etc, and I'm also sure that they could & would if they wanted to, and having them stored on a server is just more data to potentially be stolen in some future hack).

While logged into the old Windows and running Chrome:

  1. Go to the Advanced Settings page -> Manage Passwords
  2. In the "Saved passwords" section, select the website and click Show
  3. Copy or write down the logins & passwords

Now's a good time to use an encrypted password storage program like KeePass too, if you don't want to have any plaintext files or actual paper with your passwords on them lying around.

There are programs or extensions that can save all the logins & passwords for you, like http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/chromepass.html or LastPass (but it uses cloud storage too, similar to Chrome's sync with Google).

Use a Virtual Machine for the old OS

Windows is sometimes funny & won't boot from just copied files, and if you don't want to boot the old drive directly you should be able to boot the old hard drive using a Virtual Machine inside your new OS, using raw hard disk access. See this ServerWatch article for more info.

For VirutalBox the key getting the hard drive into VirtualBox with this:

VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "C:\Users\<user_name>\VirtualBox VMs\<VM_folder_name>\<file_name>.vmdk" -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive#

Or in Linux the hard drives are called /dev/sdX or /dev/hdX:

VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "</path/to/file>.vmdk" -rawdisk /dev/sdX
Xen2050
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As you have access to your old laptop, login into chrome using any google account and wait for it to sync your data (which includes saved passwords) to the google server. After that in your new laptop, login into chrome using the same google account. Then the chrome will sync all of your profile data automatically.

Edit : If you really want to transfer your login credentials manually, then this answer to the question "How does google chrome stores passwords" might help you.

Vamsi
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