selenium - ImportError: sys.meta_path is None, Python is likely shutting down

Question

Newbee here. Kindly explain why this issue happened and how to fix it.

Error:

"C:Program Files (x86)Python36-32python.exe" C:/Users/Vivek-Pc/PycharmProjects/tryOutSeries/searchTryout2.py Exception ignored in: > Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:Program Files (x86)Python36-32libsite-packagesseleniumwebdrivercommonservice.py", line 173, in del File "C:Program Files (x86)Python36-32libsite-packagesseleniumwebdrivercommonservice.py", line 149, in stop File "C:Program Files (x86)Python36-32libsite-packagesseleniumwebdrivercommonservice.py", line 120, in send_remote_shutdown_command ImportError: sys.meta_path is None, Python is likely shutting down Process finished with exit code 0

Code Used:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys

driver_path = "c:Program Files (x86)Python36-32Libsite-packagesseleniumwebdriverchromechromedriver"
b_obj = webdriver.Chrome(driver_path)
b_obj.implicitly_wait(15)
b_obj.maximize_window()
b_obj.get('http://stackoverflow.com/')

search_box = b_obj.find_element_by_name('q')
search_box.clear()
search_box.send_keys("Selenium")
search_box.submit()
b_obj.close()

Environment Info:

Windows, Selenium, Python, Chrome (chromedriver.exe) & PyCharm

Answer 1

I've reproduced the same error using Python 3.6, Selenium 3.0.2 and ChromeDriver 2.27 (everything latest at this point).

The problem appears to happen when the Python selenium webdriver tries to stop the chromedriver service either when you explicitly close the driver, or when the script execution simply ends (and the __del__ method gets to be executed).

Reported the issue to Python/Selenium github issue tracker:

• sys.meta_path is None, Python is likely shutting down

Workaround:

I found that using driver.quit() instead of driver.close() helps to workaround the problem.