Hey guys, I had to reinstall windows recently, and on reinstalling Chrome (dev channel 3.0.193.1), I started noticing that the omnibar was behaving weirdly. I copied my User data from the previous user and pasted it into the Google directory. Now, it doesn't automatically search anything, and when it loads, the history is empty. Hence, all my thumbnails and bookmarks don't seem to work. If I add the default search engine as google, it searches everything I type on google, even if it's a url.
Any idea what could be causing the problem?

(PS: My user name on my computer is in the form of "User.Comp Name.000" Can this cause the problem?)

Also, when I try visiting the history, (chrome://history/) it just says "Loading.." and nothing appears.

is this the default folder for Chrome in your system?

C:\Documents and Settings\User.Comp Name.000\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome

@sulasno : yes, that's my default folder..

I would try a uninstall and reinstall of Chrome;

remove all traces of Chrome after uninstalling before reinstalling

I agree, fully removing Chrome would be a wise idea. Follow the instructions under number 4 here: Troubleshooting Help - Read Before Posting

Also your username is showing up that way because, at some point, your user profile went corrupt and was auto-recovered by the system (or you performed a repair install at some point). This could indeed be part of the problem if it happened at the same time considering Chrome resides in your user profile.

In any case a full removal (+ manual removal) and a reinstall should clear you right up.

Similar symptoms to the original poster.
[I'd recently unleashed Windows-Update with a vengeance, installing XP SP3 and IE8 among other updates. That's when I noticed the indicated problems with Chrome (oh, and the process took an age to disappear from taskmgr after I'd closed the last window, too) - and also the machine being otherwise slow apparently due to lots of hard-drive access.]

I'd already tried an uninstall / reinstall *leaving* my user-data in place, then I found this thread.

Anyway, upon checking in my
C:\documents and settings\<user-name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default
directory, I found that I had two files, "History" and "History Index <current month>", that had grown to an entirely disproportionate 2+GB each.

I closed Chrome, deleted those two files, and things are running at speed again. Looks like I've lost my history (and address bar history?) but that's not a big concern for me.

(I just *knew* if I installed IE8 it was going to try to nobble my other browsers!)

HTH
Mike.

Options | Personal Stuff
Clear browsing data
would be a better method of clearing the cache

talking about big files;
take a look at
C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default

my thumbnails file is 27.3 MB
and I thought thumbnails are small :-)