Facing conceptually the same issue with fresh Chrome/ChromeDriver combo. In my case the issue is that Chrome stopped booting up in debugger mode (with --remote-debugging-port=9222). At the same time adding another parameter (--user-data-dir="C:\temp\chrome_profile") solves the issue.

It seems that entering into remote debug mode with new Chrome either changed or bugged - I am expecting a lot more similar issue tickets to come.