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

I am having the same exact issue.  Chromium browsers will randomly freeze from 1 to 3 minutes at a time, while browsing randomly.

I started to see this issue around a week ago and after restoring from a full backup from 22-January-2021 the issue disappeared for a day or 2.

I wasn't paying attention to windows update, but eventually the issue came back.

If I use Internet Explorer 11, no issues.

If I wait long enough, the browser *always* comes back / responds and finishes what it was doing.

In chrome, I have the bookmarks bar visible.  When I freeze, I can still hover over the bookmarks bar and the popup window will show up telling me the full URL.

I can still drag from the "lock" icon to the desktop and create a shortcut during this freeze.

I can still (at least 1 time) try to open a new tab by clicking plus.  That seems to fully freeze the window.

I can still minimize / restore the window during the freeze (albeit the content inside the window is static / stuck / not updating until the freeze is over).

Same behavior in Edge. but get this,  once Chrome freezes, I'll start to use edge (out of boredom as the rest of windows is fine).  Edge may then freeze too.  But Chrome will come back first, then Edge will come back.  

So they aren't tied together as to what causes them to freeze, but there's definitely something trying to run behind the scenes that either gets hung and terminates (thus the browser coming back) or just takes so dang long that the browser cant finish rendering until the process is done.

I really think its a windows update.

Windows Ver: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19042.804]

Edge: Version 88.0.705.63 (Official build) (64-bit)

Chrome: Version 88.0.4324.150 (Official Build) (64-bit)

EDIT: after about 2 hours of testing, for me turning off hardware acceleration stops all freezing.  It has a side effect of a slightly higher processor utilization which I guess makes sense given the setting change.   My hypothesis is I turned off hardware acceleration on Chrome but not Edge.  I tried to get Chrome to freeze.  Usually I could provoke it to freeze within 10 minutes of usage.  But after 10 minutes, it kept working normally.  I went to Edge (hardware acceleration = on ... no change) and got it to freeze in about 6 minutes of random browsing, opening and closing tabs..... and as expected it woke up / start responding again on its own within like 3 minutes.  

So something from windows update that is now causing hardware acceleration issues for some configurations?

It is very frustrating.  I have turned off hardware acceleration too and all is good.  I have a separate graphics card, so this should not happen, and nor should we have to turn off hardware acceleration.

I have the same issue on a newly built machine, new copy of Windows as of yesterday.

I can recreate the issue on demand.  Open Chrome (or Edge) and search "Adobe illustrator"  then click Buy now.  It will freeze for a about a minute and then come to life again.  It will happen with other sites too, but the adobe buy now will make it happen every time.

Viewing the process explorer, I see other threads still active and clicking on items in the bookmarks bar does cause process to spawn and die, though nothing happens on the screen.

It is a new machine but has an older graphics card in it for now.

I have the same exact issue - Chromium browsers freezing and unfreezing randomly.  This is a flaw in the development process and should be fixed.  There are way too many of us having the issue and it is unbelievable we have to go through all of the ridiculous resolution steps and none of them work (Microsoft support just guessing). 

However, turning off hardware acceleration seems to do the trick, so there Microsoft, - go figure out why the code in the hardware acceleration setting causes the Chromium freeze issues.

I have the same exact issue - Chromium browsers freezing and unfreezing randomly.  This is a flaw in the development process and should be fixed.  There are way too many of us having the issue and it is unbelievable we have to go through all of the ridiculous resolution steps and none of them work (Microsoft support just guessing). 

However, turning off hardware acceleration seems to do the trick, so there Microsoft, - go figure out why the code in the hardware acceleration setting causes the Chromium freeze issues.

Good luck with this, now try clear everything on your Edge/Chrome(history, cache, everything) and try browsing few homepages at the same time(click on 1 tab, don't wait for it to load and go for another tab and repeat this for 4-5 tabs).

While waiting, try to open a video from your PC.

Repeat the above steps for few times where during repeating this, open another new homepages. Mine sure will fail on 3rd-4th time or could be faster.

After changing to Firefox, such issue are lesser, could be 1 week once(after I clear browser) or cannot get at all.

After turning off hardware acceleration, I have opened many tabs, some with video's, netflix, and other content and have yet to experience a freeze.  However, I will monitor the situation and report if the problem arises again.   It is a amazing the OS provides little to know assistance in reporting the issue.  You would think there would be a meaningful logged event pointing to the culprit.