Update: 8/15/2018:
While the steps listed below may help some people, I continued to have problems shortly after I posted this article. I did finally find a permanent fix to my problem though. I simply switched my SSD from IDE mode to AHCI mode. You can find more information on how to do that here: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2795928/switch-ide-ahci-windows.html
Make sure to follow the instructions closely. Good luck.
For more than a few months, I had a very annoying problem with my computer. My Chrome browser would freeze my computer for up to 1 minute while surfing the web. I couldn’t do anything during this time. Nothing would work during the freeze. I couldn’t start the task manager, start menu… nothing. I noticed at the bottom right hand corner of the browser that it said “waiting for cache”. So I did what any other person would do. I Googled “Chrome waiting for cache freeze”.
Many forum posts showed up in the search results, but after troubleshooting for about an hour, I couldn’t find a solution.
I cleared my cache, re-installed Chrome, ran disk cleanup, chkdsk, and did an anti virus scan. Nothing worked. The problem persisted. I even started using Firefox, but I could tell that my high performance gaming computer wasn’t performing well.
So after troubleshooting the software for so long, I thought… “it must be a hardware issue… most likely the hard drive.
Here’s how I found and fixed the problem:
There’s a great piece of software on every Windows 10 PC that everyone should know about. It’s called “Event Viewer”. I opened this up, clicked on “Administrative Events”, and found over 800 errors that Windows had logged. It didn’t take me long to find the error that I was looking for:
DllHost (644) WebCacheLocal: A request to write to the file “AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsWebCacheV01.log” at offset 348160 (0x0000000000055000) for 4096 (0x00001000) bytes succeeded, but took an abnormally long time (58 seconds) to be serviced by the OS. In addition, 0 other I/O requests to this file have also taken an abnormally long time to be serviced since the last message regarding this problem was posted 63 seconds ago. This problem is likely due to faulty hardware. Please contact your hardware vendor for further assistance diagnosing the problem.
There was the problem. My SSD hard drive was taking far too long to write to the WebCache folder. The error even tells me specifically that it’s probably a hardware problem. Sidenote: I am not convinced that this is a problem specifically with SSD hard drives. I believe that any type of hard drive could have this problem.
So now that I found the issue, I shut down my computer, unplugged everything and opened it up. I removed my hard drive from my computer to examine it, and found that the power connector on the hard drive had dust/dirt buildup on it. I then grabbed a paper towel and some 90% isopropyl alcohol and cleaned it off. (I also cleaned the rest of the inside of my computer, which I would highly recommend. Just get the dust out with compressed air and some paper towels.)
After re-connecting everything and starting my computer, I was dissapointed to find that I still had the “waiting for cache” problem.
So I opened my computer again, and decided to change the sata cable and sata port on the motherboard that my hard drive was connected to.
Viola!
No more “waiting for cache”. It’s was fixed!
So in a nutshell… your problem is most likely one of 3 things:
- You might have a failing hard drive. Run chkdsk. If it comes back as “OK”, then your problem is one of the below:
- Your sata cable that is connected to your hard drive is faulty. Change your sata cable.
- Your power cable that is connected to your hard drive is faulty. Change your power cable.
- Your sata port on your motherboard is faulty, connect your hard drive to a different sata port.
Troubleshooting the four bullet points above is easy. Do it, and you may find yourself with a well performing computer again.