GoogleChromePortable.exe Doesn't Launch chrome.exe

I have to run Google Chrome Portable from a "network" drive. It gets half-way started, but does not proceed.

Looking in Task Manager, I see GoogleChromePortable.exe running, but no chrome.exe processes running. In the Chrome UI, I see a what looks like an "about:blank" page (without "about:blank" actually being in the URL field), but the mouse pointer is a wait-cursor (the hourglass) in the content area.

If I enter an URL in the URL field, it vanishes when I press enter, and the content area still looks like about:blank, with a wait-cursor.

If I start GoogleChromePortable.exe with log-level of 0 or 3, I get an empty chrome_debug.log. If I start it with log-level of 9, chrome_debug.log contains only a message that 9 is an invalid log level.

My employer uses a whole-disk encryption product, which attempts to encrypt NTFS or FAT partitions on USB drives when they're inserted. I'm working around this by running a VM, which is accessing a raw partition on the USB drive. My VM then shares folders on a host-only network.

So to Windows, it looks like Chrome Portable is running from a network drive. I'm the only person who will ever use this 'network' drive.

I'm thinking that GoogleChromePortable.exe is attempting to lock something before it lets things proceed.

Any suggestions as to how to get it to stop waiting for whatever it is waiting for?