r/chromeos • u/LongDongTheSauceGod • 1d ago

Troubleshooting Trying to restore windows and Tabs

Just as the title says, I'm trying to get my chrome window back.

What happened was I needed to download the, now understandable to me, horrendous LockDown Browser.
After opening a mock exam to see if it's working, it combined all of my chrome windows and ungrouped all tab groups in those windows after combining. After that, my Chromebook restarted, and I couldn't use the ctrl + shift + t method to reopen the closed windows and the combined window. I checked my history after to see if I could get something back, but it turns out LockDown Browser had deleted all of History.

So here I am hoping someone knows something on how to restore or gain access to my windows and tabs. And in case it's helpful, I have history deleted after 18 months.

Thank you to anyone who has any ideas or information I can use. Much appreciated!

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u/LegAcceptable2362 1d ago

Assuming this is a school Chromebook which is locked down by admin policies there's nothing you can do but talk to the school's IT people.

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u/Eleison23 Acer 516GE CBG516-1H | Stable 1d ago

Lockdown browser: Knowledge Base

https://support.respondus.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409604344731-Can-a-Chromebook-be-used-with-LockDown-Browser-and-Respondus-Monitor-Higher-Ed

Look, I can't give a lot of advice about recovering your account after this sort of disaster. You need to proactively expect them to happen and take steps in advance. But if someone else revisits this thread with the same question, I'll give a few tips for advance planning:

You shouldn't need to use a personal account for this thing. At the very least, you will do it from your academic account, that is dedicated to schoolwork and test-taking. Even so, this is a very intrusive and destructive environment, which is unfortunately necessary, considering the types of cyber-cheating that I know for a fact and I have witnessed in the world of education.

You would ideally do this from a dedicated login on a clean and dedicated account. You could open a fresh Google account to do it from, if they're demanding a personal account for you to use. If they require your academic account, or a live account of some type, then you'll need to back it up. Let me say that again, back up your account on a regular basis, no matter what. This is a critical factor in disaster recovery like yours today.

You can now schedule Google Takeout to produce ZIP files that contain all the stuff you want to export. This can be everything, all-inclusive, insofar as they can represent the data, or you can pick and choose which apps and which services are backed up. Those ZIP files are monster downloads, and can be tricky to manage locally. But it's possible. Please backup your system. Stick those ZIPs on a thumb drive or squirrel them away on an HDD for longer archival storage. Even a DVD-R or a BD-RE-XL can work here.

Your Chrome bookmarks, your calendars, important emails, and other interesting things can be exported separately, without resorting to Takeout. So consider doing this as well. Leverage your Drive space for backups that you can grab online real quickly. Use those USB sticks again, for backing up the important things in life. Don't rely on your Gmail to cough up important attachments; save them to Drive as real files: they're visible and manageable that way.

Now, admittedly if you've made it this far, you're thinking that these are too many precautions to take against LockDown Browser. It's not that destructive, you say. True, but a good backup regimen is really worthwhile, and protects you from a lot of disaster scenarios, not merely the ones you stepped into by enrolling in college.