[🚫 Bug] vscode-extension-tester Fails to Launch VS Code – ChromeDriver Crash on Windows

[NawelChaker]

Describe the bug

I am unable to execute my automation tests using vscode-extension-tester, even though the appropriate version of ChromeDriver is downloaded and extracted successfully.

During test execution, Chrome (i.e. the Electron instance of VS Code) crashes on startup, and the test fails with a SessionNotCreatedError. ChromeDriver assumes the Chromium instance has crashed, even though all setup steps succeed.

I also tried the following in settings.json to troubleshoot:

{
  "disable-chromium-sandbox": true,
  "terminal.integrated.gpuAcceleration": "off"
}

Steps to reproduce

1. Create a Windows virtual machine (Tiny Runner)
2. Install Node.js
3. Set up a project with vscode-extension-tester
4. Add pipeline/config to execute automation tests
5. Run the tests

Logs

Downloading VS Code: 1.99.2 / stable
VS Code exists in local cache, skipping download
Downloading ChromeDriver 132.0.6834.159 from: https://storage.googleapis.com/chrome-for-testing-public/132.0.6834.159/win64/chromedriver-win64.zip
progress: 0/9092615 (0%)
progress: 9092615/9092615 (100%)
Unpacking ChromeDriver 132.0.6834.159 into PATH\.vscode-test
Success!

"before all" hook in "{root}":
  SessionNotCreatedError: session not created: Chrome failed to start: crashed.
  (chrome not reachable)
  (The process started from chrome location PATH\.vscode-test\VSCode-win32-x64-archive\Code.exe is no longer running, so ChromeDriver is assuming that Chrome has crashed.)

      at Object.throwDecodedError (node_modules\selenium-webdriver\lib\error.js:523:15)
      at parseHttpResponse (node_modules\selenium-webdriver\lib\http.js:524:13)
      at Executor.execute (node_modules\selenium-webdriver\lib\http.js:456:28)
      at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)

Operating System

Windows

Visual Studio Code

1.99.2

vscode-extension-tester

8.14.1

NodeJS

20.9.0