Browsers Closing Themselves: "crome.exe" process found

Spouse showed me her Dell running Win 8.1, said that Chrome was closing itself.
Tried to find security program for scan, learned that it is Windows Defender (I use Win 7 on mine, running MSE).

But in the task list, I found a process called "crome.exe" running at 76% CPU!!!!! (yes, the spelling on that process is correct)

Had to use End Task twice to shut it down.

This all looks fishy to me, which is why I post here. Google search for "crome process" gets no meaningful results

Started running Defender full scan now & not complete.

Told spouse to use IE rather than Chrome for now, and it is shutting itself down just the same.

Appreciate information about what it going on.

As a precaution download and run Malwarebytes Free, not the trial version:
https://www.malwarebytes.org/

Do you have a 3rd party Firewall or anti-virus program installed?

All security software for this Win 8.1 installation is the Microsoft default (Windows Defender?), running since laptop purchase 6-7 months ago.

Found a McAfee icon but it seems not even a(n paying) account was created, so it is not running, or runnable for scan without an account creation.

Will install and run Malwarebytes scan after Defender scan completes and report back here with all results.

Is "crome.exe" a known process? And one running the CPU so high?

It does sound fishy to me too. Various hits on this filename do link it to Malware (Malware scan of crome.exe (GoogleUpdate) 8f90eb4ebfdc9100fcae57bc06abaf6352def3ac - herdProtect , Malware scan of Crome.exe (SomeFile) 53d18334baf14812a932940a57f77f6ab2760011 - herdProtect). You should scan it online though. Here is how :

Open the Task Manager > Right-Click the "Crome.exe" process > Open File Location
This should indicate you where the file is located exactly.

Go to this link : https://www.virustotal.com/
Click on choose file and select Crome.exe. Then Scan It.

You'll get a report on the file safety.

If you don't have any backup of your PC, you can download a free version/trial of one of the Anti-Viruses that successfuly detected the file as infected in the report and try to clean your PC automatically.

Uninstall McAfee if you are not using it. Go to this page, d/l the McAfee uninstaller & follow the directions:

Uninstallers (removal tools) for common Windows antivirus software - ESET Knowledgebase

Even if it is not running, it can still cause problems with other AV products.