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I've been having trouble for with chrome for the past few days.
Chrome would freeze for several minutes each time I open it up. Once Chrome starts working again everything is normal, but it's frustrating when you have to wait several minutes before you can do anything with your web browser.
I managed to find one solution to this, which I have posted as an answer below, but if anyone else has had similar problems and managed to solve them, please feel free to tell us how.
I found the solution to chrome's startup freezing in the comments of this chrome issue report:
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=374624
This was comment #27, all credit goes to the author of the comment for figuring it out:
I am working on this issue right now.
Using some clues from you all here, I've tracked it down this.
Process explorer shows a security token request and termination loop happening under lsass.exe, with token being \:1c42f
Such as: Smith_VAIO\John:1c42f
Upon inspection with Process Monitor, we see the following:
11:34:57.3492434 AM lsass.exe 908 RegQueryKey HKLM SUCCESS Query: HandleTags, HandleTags: 0x0 11:34:57.3492833 AM lsass.exe 908 RegOpenKey HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\S-1-5-21-563832473-1690269938-841482641-1000 SUCCESS Desired Access: Read 11:34:57.3493295 AM lsass.exe 908 RegQueryValue HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\S-1-5-21-563832473-1690269938-841482641-1000\ProfileImagePath SUCCESS Type: REG_EXPAND_SZ, Length: 28, Data: C:\Users\John 11:34:57.3493613 AM lsass.exe 908 RegQueryValue HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\S-1-5-21-563832473-1690269938-841482641-1000\ProfileImagePath SUCCESS Type: REG_EXPAND_SZ, Length: 28, Data: C:\Users\John 11:34:57.3493926 AM lsass.exe 908 RegCloseKey HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\S-1-5-21-563832473-1690269938-841482641-1000 SUCCESS 11:34:57.3495197 AM lsass.exe 908 CreateFile C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect\S-1-5-21-563832473-1690269938-841482641-513\Preferred PATH NOT FOUND Desired Access: Generic Read, Disposition: Open, Options: Sequential Access, Synchronous IO Non-Alert, Non-Directory File, Attributes: HS, ShareMode: Read, AllocationSize: n/a, Impersonating: Smith_VAIO\John
This behavior loops.
Sometimes throwing in:
11:34:57.1073869 AM lsass.exe 908 CreateFile C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect\CREDHIST SUCCESS Desired Access: Generic Read/Write, Disposition: OpenIf, Options: Synchronous IO Non-Alert, Non-Directory File, Random Access, Attributes: HS, ShareMode: None, AllocationSize: 0, Impersonating: Smith_VAIO\John, OpenResult: Opened 11:34:57.1074461 AM lsass.exe 908 QueryStandardInformationFile C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect\CREDHIST SUCCESS AllocationSize: 24, EndOfFile: 24, NumberOfLinks: 1, DeletePending: False, Directory: False 11:34:57.1074769 AM lsass.exe 908 CreateFileMapping C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect\CREDHIST FILE LOCKED WITH WRITERS SyncType: SyncTypeCreateSection, PageProtection: 11:34:57.1075034 AM lsass.exe 908 QueryStandardInformationFile C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect\CREDHIST SUCCESS AllocationSize: 24, EndOfFile: 24, NumberOfLinks: 1, DeletePending: False, Directory: False 11:34:57.1075669 AM lsass.exe 908 CreateFileMapping C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect\CREDHIST SUCCESS SyncType: SyncTypeOther 11:34:57.1076805 AM lsass.exe 908 CloseFile C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect\CREDHIST SUCCESS
So...Using that info, I went to the path "C:\Users\John\Appdata\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect\" and found one folder with a random guid that was created days ago. lsass.exe was currently still in a 'stuck' state, when I deleted this guid folder, and another one was immediately created with a new guid. The next step is probably unnecessary, but I deleted the newly created guid folder as well, and this time it did not respawn. lsass.exe processor time was back to normal. I attempted to close chrome, at which point it closed properly. I reopened chrome, observed lsass use some cpu for about 10 seconds, then stop. I closed chrome, and the process terminated properly yet again. I then reopened chrome to observe the same behavior as previous (normal behavior).
So, conclusion, the folder located at "C:\Users\\appdata\roaming\microsoft\protect\" must be deleted.
That worked in my case.
Hope you value the info!
I'm just posting it here because I had a hard time finding this solution and I hope I can make it easier for someone else in the future.
I did exactly what the author of the comment suggested, once I deleted the folder, and reran chrome, the folder was recreated, but the chrome no longer froze. The folder has a strange name that consists of a long line of different characters, and it appears to be empty, but deleting it definitely did the trick for me.
Good luck!
