protractor "ERROR - Unable to start a WebDriver session" - angularjs

Question

I have some it tests on my single-page-app written in angular.
the tests are in protractor.
they ran during the build before, but now that I moved all of them to a branch something got broken and when I run the tests I'm getting:
Running "protractor:normal" (protractor) task
Starting selenium standalone server...
[launcher] Running 1 instances of WebDriver
Selenium standalone server started at http://172.31.9.226:23730/wd/hub
ERROR - Unable to start a WebDriver session.
c:\projects\blog-manager\node_modules\protractor\node_modules\selenium- webdriver\lib\atoms\error.js:113
var template = new Error(this.message);
^
Warning: Protractor test(s) failed. Exit code: 1 Use --force to continue.
Aborted due to warnings.
Process finished with exit code 6
the conf file is as follows:
'use strict';
module.exports.config = {
allScriptsTimeout: 60000,
baseUrl: 'http://localhost:9000/',
specs: [
process.cwd() + '/test/spec/e2e/**/*.js'//,
// process.cwd() + '/test/e2e/spec/**/*.js'
],
framework: 'jasmine',
capabilities: {
browserName: 'chrome',
"chromeOptions": {
binary: "C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe",
args: [],
extensions: [],
}
},
onPrepare: function () {
// Disable animations so e2e tests run more quickly
var disableNgAnimate = function () {
angular.module('disableNgAnimate', []).run(function ($animate) {
$animate.enabled(false);
});
};
browser.addMockModule('disableNgAnimate', disableNgAnimate);
// Store the name of the browser that's currently being used.
browser.getCapabilities().then(function (caps) {
browser.params.browser = caps.get('browserName');
});
},
jasmineNodeOpts: {
defaultTimeoutInterval: 300000
}
};
any suggestions on how to solve this would be much appreciated.
Thanks!

Answer 1

According to alecxe's answer it's chrome binary issue which can be solved by installing chrome in same place as chromedriver expects to be or specifying the executable path to the binary settings.
capabilities: {
"browserName": "chrome",
"chromeOptions": {
binary: "D:/Program Files/Chrome/chrome.exe",
args: [],
extensions: [],
}
},
See his answer here
Even though you are setting the executable path correctly it seems little off to me binary: "C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe",
Is this correct?
Alternatively, I would try this