In order to clear the corrupted 'JumpListIconsOld' folder I ran chkdsk which found an error in file name linkage:

Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ...
                                                                                Error detected in index $I30 for file 2457.
Error detected in index $I30 for file 2457.
Error detected in index $I30 for file 2457.
                                                                                Index entry NGENNI~1.DAT in index $I30 of file 567170 is incorrect.

After I could enter the 'JumpListIconsOld' folder. I emptied both 'JumpListIcons' and 'JumpListIconsOld', and for now my issues with page loading seem to have been resolved. I will report back in case this changes.

I hope this can help someone pinpoint the exact problem, as this seems quite prevalent! I reinstalled Chrome for the same reason before which seemed to have 'helped'. Perhaps reinstalling Chrome simply empties that folder. At least, on my system everything now seems to be pointing towards it.

It should never be possible for a user-mode program (i.e.; not a kernel driver) to corrupt the disk because all access to the disk goes through file-system drivers whose job it is to maintain the integrity of the filesystem.

That said, I have had one other report of this folder getting into a bad state - in the other case it was permissions that were set such that Chrome couldn't write to the JumpListIconsOld folder. So, there may be something that Chrome is doing that, perhaps combined with unplanned OS shutdowns (blue-screens, power outages) is causing this folder to become corrupt.

I believe that this is one of the root causes of  crbug.com/179576  so I'm going to mark this bug as a duplicate of that one.

I did encounter an irregular amount blue screens on this device, which I merely attributed to Windows 10 still being unstable at this point (with regular updates being pushed out). However, I do seem to recall most crashes occurred while using Chrome, but this is mostly a post-event recollection and I use the web browser for the majority of the time, thus would not rely too heavily on this.

However, if it would be of any help. My Windows event viewer lists the following crashes since 12/9/2015, ordered by occurance.

- 13 times: FAULTY_HARDWARE_CORRUPTED_PAGE (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff557329(v=vs.85).aspx)
- 6 times: BugcheckCode 0
- 2 times: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff560129(v=vs.85).aspx)
- 1 time: BAD_POOL_CALLER (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff560185(v=vs.85).aspx)
- 1 time: SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff558949(v=vs.85).aspx)
- 1 time: BAD_POOL_HEADER (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff557389(v=vs.85).aspx)

The regularity at which FAULTY_HARDWARE_CORRUPTED_PAGE occurs is concerting. It, however, has not occurred since I posted this bug report, and my jumpListIcons folders look normal (24 items in each, with sizes of either 0 or 28kb).

Out of interest (and possibly to know what to focus on in case the two would be related), at what point in time are the files in jumplistIcons manipulated, i.e., is this tied to particular actions in the UI?

Well, ... and a quick google for 'FAULT_HARDWARE_CORRUPTED_PAGE' magically pops up as top hit the laptop I am using and this known issue: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-power/faulty-hardware-corrupted-page-error-blue-screen/c314a80f-150b-4fe8-8bb2-6801b07f0ac9?auth=1

This is probably thus not related.

Although, perhaps @brucedawson this line of thought was not completely crazy. The reason I was looking into this is because I thought most of the blue screens occurred while switching between tabs, thus that it might be related. However, since memory is quite error prone, I did not want to jump to conclusions.

However, on the previously linked thread I now read two users reporting the same issue:

    -- [...] Also often happens when switching tabs in browser.

    Hey Craig,
    My crashes also occur when I change tabs in Chrome. Three times and all times were directly linked to changing tabs.

Perhaps worthwhile verifying what exactly happens when you switch tabs (or otherwise when jumplistIcons files are manipulated) that could cause such a kernel error. 

I think I had this problem too.

I was wondering why my Chrome had gotten so slow over this past couple of weeks.

Slow loading pages.  Slow loading images.  Images refusing to load.  Occasionally images load but then disappear seconds later.

Turns out I had ~50,000 files totally ~300 MB in "\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\JumpListIcons.

But in my case "\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\JumpListIconsOld" opens fine.  I can access it.  And when I ran CHKDSK it shows no errors.

I had earlier re-installed Chrome over top of the existing installation.  In my case that didn't improve things.

My system is Windows 10 64-bit production release with Kaspersky Total Security 16.0.1.445(c).  No betas of anything.  Updates run automatically, plus manually monthly.

Chrome Version 52.0.2743.82 m (64-bit).

I hadn't noticed any crashes during the time the slowdown occurred.  There have never been any 'blue screens'.  Once several months ago I had to power off when it got stuck, but that is it.  

Checking Windows Event Viewer I see no 'Error' messages from Chrome or mentioning Chrome (just errors that related to events around programs and the video driver being updated).

I tried to delete the content of "\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\JumpListIcons" and it did not delete.

It seems the Windows Index for "\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\JumpListIcons" is corrupted.  

I don't know when the index corruption occurred, whether it was earlier or due to the attempt at deletion.

@keithar It must have corrupted earlier, which is why Chrome couldn't clean up the folder either. In other words, it does seem like your bug report is similar to this one.

However, I do not believe that this folder corrupting this often is a coincidence ... Although it might be a bug in the file system, my intuition tells me it must be Chrome abusing the file system to some extent.

Previously, this bug was merged into  bug 179576  as they are basically the same thing. Since I have merged  bug 179576  into  bug 40407  which was created even earlier and has more discussion, I will merge this bug into  bug 40407  as well.

I have checked in a fix to this bug. Though I think this can fix this bug (or part of it), I was not able to verify it because I cannot replicate the bug locally on my machine. 

This fix is available in the canary version of chrome, not the stable version which you are using now yet. If you can try the canary version and see if you still have this issue, that will help us better understand the bug and the current fix. The canary version of chrome can be downloaded via https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/canary.html

You will find "JumplistIcons" folder for canary in a similar path to the one you have trouble with now. 

If you want to provide feedback to us, could you please reply in  bug 40407 ?

Thank you!