Brave browser freezes

Browser Support
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1

Description of the issue:
Brave browser keeps freezing entire PC to the point where only available option to fix it is restarting the system. Any other opened program freezes aswell.

Steps to Reproduce
Don’t know exactly when it happens, it happens randomly while playing performance-demanding games aswell as when PC is just idling with the browser open. The only thing that I am certain - Brave is the cause of the freezes as I tested other browsers and non of them caused any freeze.

Expected result:
Brave browser does not freeze entire PC.

Reproduces how often:
Depends, it may occur after 1 hour of using the browser, may not occur for entire day, but mostly it happens at least once a day.

Operating System and Brave Version:
OS: Windows 11, system is uptodate with updates.
Brave version: 1.79.126

Additional Information:
Additional info about my PC:
Laptop Lenovo Ideapad 3
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 4600H
RAM: 8 GB

Have already tried some advices that other people posted on the forum, such as turning on and off hardware acceleration, updating any possible driver, even tried to re-install the browser and tried different versions, the problem persisted.

2

Hello @Arth0 - thanks for posting, and I’m sorry to hear you’re encountering this behavior. I haven’t seen other reports specifying this precisely, and you’ve already performed quite a bit of troubleshooting on your own.

By trying other browsers, have you tried them for the same length of running-time as normal Brave usage without opening Brave at all (as you’ve specified this happens randomly, sometimes not for an entire day)?

Also, has Brave provided any capacity to collect a crash report?

And finally, is this a new behavior, or has this been occurring for a while? (If for a while, are you able to trace it back to when it originally appeared?) - Further data on this can be found by selecting your Start menu and searching for ‘reliability’ and selecting ‘View reliability history’. Typically, notes about application/program performance can be found here with additional notes.

Many thanks,
Lee

3

By trying other browsers, have you tried them for the same length of running-time as normal Brave usage without opening Brave at all?

I used other browsers for a long period of time and have not encountered this kind of issue. Before Brave I used Google for majority of the time, but recently decided to switch browser because Google stopped satisfying me. Before coming to Brave I used Opera GX for short period of time, but I had some problems with it (that are not related to current one), so I decided to try this browser, that realy satisfies my needs. I did not encounter any freeze related problems while using any other browser.

has Brave provided any capacity to collect a crash report?

I don’t know exactly where and if Brave stores any crash reports, but I visited brave://crashes/ and there are no crashes saved. Maybe it is because the browser does not actually crash as I am forced to force reboot my PC. Or maybe I don’t have an option turned on somwhere to store crash reports (if such option exists).

is this a new behavior, or has this been occurring for a while?

For some time (around a month) when I first started using Brave there was no problem, but now I am getting this issue quite often. I have been dealing with this problem for a month or two now, at the time I tried all basic advices I’ve read from the others with similar problem but was too lazy to go deeper. Now I am desperate to somehow fix the issue because I want to continue to use Brave.

Further data on this can be found by selecting your Start menu and searching for ‘reliability’ and selecting ‘View reliability history’.

There are no issues related to the browser. Again, as I mentioned earlier, I think that browser does not actually crash, but just freezes, which only leaves me with 1 option - reboot the sistem.

And for the clarification for potential future questions. I did try to wait for the system to un-freeze, once waited for around 10 minutes, but nothing happened. Tried to force quit Brave using task manager, but as I mentioned earlier, everything opened during the freeze - freezes aswell. The windows however does respond to my actions, only that every program freezes.

4

Here I captured this bug. Recorded on my phone as no recording program could be launched at that state.

Link to the mp4 file, this forum does not allow to share >10mb files.

5

The issue here is that it does not actually sound like it’s Brave’s fault, at least with the information given so far. If this is happening when you’re playing demanding games, or when you just have the browser sitting there I suspect there is something else causing the issue.

Additionally, you say that you’re ‘certain’ that Brave is the cause because you used other browser and the system didn’t freeze. But if the freezing is “random”/unpredictable as you stated earlier, then the tests you performed may not have revealed much. It is possible that you tested other browsers and the system just didn’t freeze but if you’d continued testing they would have.

What I would like to test is to see if you get the same freezing using the Brave Beta
build on your PC. This way you can test a different browser (Brave Beta), with a fresh profile.

6

I will test the Brave Beta. On the topic if I am certain that the cause is Brave, then yes, I am. In every instance of freezing, which there were many, every time Brave was opened, it freezed even when the brave was the only program launched, aside for some small unimportant programs that never caused freeze on their own. So yes, I do believe that Brave is the cause as even no other browser did cause this issue.

7

And again, on the topic if I am certain that the Brave is the cause. A small detail I just remembered - Brave freezes first, then every other program. For example, I am playing a game, everything runs smoothly, I Alt-Tab to browser and it can immediely freeze, after which every single other program freezes aswell. I do not remember a single time when other program freezed before Brave.

8

Small update, been little over a day using Brave Beta, no freeze so far.