How to solve W3 Total Cache plugin Error

6th Feb 2013, Wednesday

Today, while upgrading the W3 total cache plugin,  I got an error displaying

W3 Total Cache Error: some files appear to be missing or out of place. Please re-install plugin or remove /home/thomasabeesh/public_html/wp-content/advanced-cache.php.

This plugin was working fine all these days, until I received a request to upgrade, and when I upgraded, I got the above error.  I am not sure if it’s because I didn’t deactivate the plugin first before upgrading.

So, I deactivated the plugin from the database and after that, I could log in to my WordPress account. But when i tried to activate the same plugin from my WordPress account, it again displayed the same error. This time, I deactivated all the plugins from the database, but still I couldn’t log into my account.

I contacted the Network Solutions Tech support via chat. I appreciate the guy, Craig C for his knowledge and his problem solving skills. He asked me to perform the instruction as in this post http://wordpress.org/support/topic/deactivate-plugin-manually

But I faced the same error. He offered to remove the advanced-cache.php from the wp-content folder but then it gave other errors.

As per the post, http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-w3-total-cache-how-to-uninstall-with-no-admin-panel

I asked him to remove:

• wp-content/advanced-cache.php
• wp-content/db.php
• wp-content/w3tc/
• wp-content/w3-total-cache-config.php
• wp-content/plugins/w3-total-cache/

Lo and Behold, I could log in again. Praise God 🙂