First, the technical stuff:
Brave Version 1.42.97 Chromium: 104.0.5112.102 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Windows Version 21H1, Build 19043.1889 (Autoupdted yesterday)
Problem: When Brave starts my home screen comes up just fine. However, there are 13-18 instances of Brave running which causes System to access the hard drive at about 70%. If I then to go ANY web page (especially those with animation) Brave jumps up to as many as 46 instances running and System has the hard drive at 100%_rendering my PC absolutely useless - no matter what software I am using in the foreground or background.
If I then shut down Brave, I can then watch it releasing instances and when it is totally shut down, my hard disk use drops to about 3% and the PC is fast again.
Should I then restart Brave, I go through the same sequence.
I have dumped cache (both in brve and other software and temp files at the system level), I have ran both SFC and DISM. None of this helps.
This started happening about2 months ago when Brave did an auto-update. Prior to that, Brave was fast and reliable.
Sugggestions?