Happened to me 3 days ago - first on my laptop, then later the same day on my desktop PC (both running Windows 7).
Checked my wife's Vista laptop and Chrome was working fine, so evidently the problem is most common on Windows 7.
Did an uninstall/reinstall on my laptop, still same error.
Looked around various forums but found nothing helpful so I just nuked Chrome & my Chrome profile.
Used IE to download Firefox, imported my bookmarks and all is well. In fact, Firefox has had a few decent improvements under the hood since I last used it 4 years ago. Proper syncing tool now with an account feature similar to Google. Well pleased.
I'm kinda glad that Chrome went belly-up now I've been using the latest Firefox for a few days.