Chromedriver failing to launch or connect

Up until today, I have been using chromedriver to drive my watir-webdriver tests, and I have had no problems. My server still works and runs tests on the same version of the chromedriver and chrome.

I have tried updating to the latest chromedriver, which is the chromedriver 2 experimental build. This fails due to what I can only assume are still bugs being worked out of it. I have also tried rolling back to the previous version of chromedriver with no success.

If anyone has any experience with this, I would really appreciate your expertise. I am sure it will turn out to be something simple I have overlooked.

gem versions:

watir-webdriver (0.6.2)
selenium-webdriver (2.29.0)
cucumber (1.2.1)

trace from the chromedriver below

Started ChromeDriver port=9517 version=26.0.1383.0
log=C:\Projects\oms_acceptance_tests\src\chromedriver.log
[6136:5300:0212/122320:ERROR:master_preferences.cc(110)] Failed to read master_preferences file at C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\master_preferences. Falling back to default preferences.

[6136:5300:0212/122320:ERROR:gpu_info_collector_win.cc(82)] Can't retrieve a valid WinSAT assessment.
test\automation\proxy_launcher.cc(107): error: Value of: app_launched
Actual: 5
Expected: AUTOMATION_SUCCESS
Which is: 0
Error while awaiting automation ping from browser process

[0212/122321:ERROR:proxy_launcher.cc(556)] Failed to ConnectToRunningBrowser

[0212/122321:ERROR:automation_proxy.cc(319)] Channel error in AutomationProxy.
Unable to either launch or connect to Chrome. Please check that ChromeDriver is up-to-date. Using Chrome binary at: C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe (Selenium::WebDriver::Error::UnknownError)

Upvotes: 5