The issue was that on clicking the chrome icon nothing happens, the browser does not load up, and the task manager does not show the process to be running. Not sure what triggered this though.
The solution is to go to the following path in your command prompt
C:\Documents and Settings\(user name)
Run the following statement
setup.exe --rename-chrome-exe
quit the command prompt with an exit. Chrome started working for me after that, hope it works for you as well. The link of the google page from where I got this from is below
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=2680b41d121dc73a&hl=en
Do let me know if this has helped you, if your feeling generous you could donate a dollar via paypal :)