Google Chrome on Linux won't auto fill passwords

At the time of this article, I was running Google Chrome web browser Version 39.0.2171.95 (64-bit). Everything was working fine until one day I closed the browser then reopened it too quickly and got an error about my profile being inaccessable. From that point forward, no web site would prompt me to save my password. And my entire password list appeared to be blank.

Needless to say, this was very frustrating. The user names were still there and would populate the login forms for sites I had already stored my password for. But the passwords would always come up blank. 

Going into settings->advanced->manage passwords showed two blank lists where I use to have entries.

I tried all of the other things I could find on the Internet and none of them worked. I still had Firefox installed and most of my passwords were stored there so I tried importing the passwords again. That simply caused Chrome to crash and did not solve my problem.

After a very long day of searching and trying everything, I finally got it working using these steps...

1. Download a fresh copy of Google Chrome 64bit DEB file directly from Google.
2. Close the Chrome browser.
3. Open your home folder and press CTRL+H to show hidden files and folders.
4. Go into the .config folder and move the folder google-chrome to a safe place. Yes, move it not copy it. You don't want that folder there any longer. We will put it back later.
5. Open a terminal and run these commands
   • dpkg -l | grep chrome
     (this should return at least one entry that is normally titled "google-chrome-stable" or something similar)
   • sudo dpkg -P google-chrome-stable
     (this will uninstall the browser and purge all data)
   • cd Downloads
     (this assumes you downloaded the DEB file to your Downloads folder)
   • sudo dpkg -i chrome.deb
     (change chrome.deb to the name of the DEB file you downloaded)
6. Once the install has finished, you can close the terminal.
7. Launch the new install of the Google Chrome browser and get logged in.
8. You should be able to go to a login screen and Chrome should now prompt to save passwords again.
9. Close the browser
10. Delete the folder that was just created .config/google-chrome. (this is the new version of the folder not the old one you backed up earlier)
11. Copy your old version of the google-chrome folder back into the .config folder. (copy it don't move it just to be safe)
12. Open the browser again and all of your old settings should be restored and your old passwords should start working again.

If you start having trouble again after you perform steps 8-10, simply delete the google-chrome folder again and restart the browser. Things should start working. You will need to start building your password collection again. But in my case, once I performed steps 8-10, everything worked fine and my passwords were all restored and working.

Hope this helps!