Chrome Won't Open: How to Fix It

chrome stopped opening. clicking the icon does nothing. no window appears, no loading indicator, nothing. checked task manager and there’s no chrome process running at all.

tried restarting. still won’t open. other browsers open fine. this is just chrome.

what’s the most likely cause? i haven’t installed anything new recently or changed any settings. it just stopped working.

looking for the systematic fix, starting from the least destructive option. i’d rather not uninstall and lose my saved data if there’s a way to fix it without doing that. what’s the right sequence to try?