Edge and Chrome freezes while browsing making Windows not responsive for 1 minute follow by Windows explorer behave strangely

Update: Randomly I turned on Hardware acceleration (after having it off since finding this thread to stop the freezing), and in the past day, I've had no freezing!!

Anyone else who had the issue, try turning hardware acceleration back on and see if its working / not freezing anymore.

Not sure what came down or changed.

EDIT: 48 hours later and for me, the issue appears to have disappeared / not come back since I posted the update.

Happy about it but disturbed I still don't know the root cause (and for someone who supports his whole extended family with tech, that is troublesome).

I have an older, but perfectly adequate system, in my mind.  I am not a gamer so don't need anything that fancy.

I have an Radeon HD 5400 graphics card on a Gigabyte board with AMD FX-4100 Quad-Core Processor and 8 Gig of RAM, using Windows 10 Pro.

Clearly in the minds of Microsoft and Google, this system belongs in the Smithsonian or Victoria and Albert Museum.  I thought we were supposed to be in a new "don't throw it away" world.

They do need to fix this issue, or don't they see it is an issue as it our fault for having "outdated equipment"?  We shouldn't have to turn off hardware acceleration, and if that is needed the operating system should be able to detect that and suggest a workaround, as we have discovered.  Those that are less savvy than us may just decide, unnecessarily, that is time for a new computer.  Very sad and disappointing.

I turned off hardware acceleration on Edge and Chrome and have not had a freeze since.  As has been mentioned, it could be the code that is disabled when hardware acceleration is enabled which probably allows direct access to the video card driver / hardware combination.  Sounds like a great place for some investigation and a fix.  

For now I am satisfied my computer is no longer freezing but the root cause should be identified and fixed.

Interesting.  I have a AMD Radeon HD 6700 Series in there now and it sees the issue.

When I first assembled the machine I had my kids Nvidia card (much newer) in there and I was not seeing the crash.  When he reclaimed his card I had to stick the old Radeon in there since the Ryzen 7 does not have integrated graphics.  

I thought the card may be the issue given the workaround for disabling the hardware acceleration.  If I could get a decent video card this would not be a problem, but absolutely nothing is available. 

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I'm thinking we may be onto something: graphics card being the culprit.

My motherboard's integrated graphics card was older than the AMD Radeon HD 6400 Series I have currently.  And I can't get a newer/faster one for this motherboard either to try as an alternative.

Interesting.  I have a AMD Radeon HD 6700 Series in there now and it sees the issue.

When I first assembled the machine I had my kids Nvidia card (much newer) in there and I was not seeing the crash.  When he reclaimed his card I had to stick the old Radeon in there since the Ryzen 7 does not have integrated graphics.  

I thought the card may be the issue given the workaround for disabling the hardware acceleration.  If I could get a decent video card this would not be a problem, but absolutely nothing is available.