Microsoft Edge on 23H2 intermittent hangups/not responding Solved

Question

Microsoft Edge on 23H2 intermittent hangups/not responding Solved

Emmanuelle Driz 35

For the past two weeks members of our fleet have been experiencing intermittent lockups in Microsoft Edge where any sort of action can result in a

Things we have tried:

Disabling/Enabling Hardware Acceleration
Clearing Cache
Resetting and resyncing Edge
Reinstallation
Rolled back to a previous version

Checked Chromium issue tracker and there is nothing listed for this issue.

Right now we are piloting 25H2 but it's not ready for primetime for production but we have not heard complaints from the test group yet.

Info on systems:
Windows 11 23H2 Build 22631.6649
Edge version 145.0.3800.82

UPDATES
After doing some testing and the minor update that came in late last week, we have confirmed that we are still observing issues in Edge version *.97.

Additionally, beta channel 146.* also exhibits the issue.

2 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Folks testing in our environment came back and have identified the culprit to be CyberArk EPM.

It looks like their update from a couple weeks back - version 26.2.0 - was causing the issue. They have an article acknowledging the issue:

https://community.cyberark.com/s/article/Chrome-Not-Responding-When-Opening-Multiple-Tabs

Although one thing to add, rolling back a version also seems to work. The solution is to be on any version but this one it seems.

This had been in our environment for almost 3 weeks without exhibiting issues. Might be a combination of an Edge update in the last week where machines started having the issue. We will be discussing this with the vendor and if there are any updates I will likely post them here.

Answer 2

Alex-L 3,450 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hi Emmanuelle Driz

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A Forum!

Sorry you’re hitting these random freezes in Edge on 23H2. Since you’ve already toggled hardware acceleration, cleared cache, reset, re-installed, even rolled back the browser, let’s try a few deeper troubleshooting steps and checks that can help pinpoint the root cause:

Test a clean Edge environment
- Launch in InPrivate mode (Ctrl + Shift + N) to rule out extensions.
- Or disable all extensions and see if the hangs persist.
- Create a brand-new Edge profile (edge://settings/profiles) and see if that remains stable.
Capture resource and crash data
- While reproducing a hang, open Task Manager and note CPU, memory and GPU usage for Edge.
- Check Windows Event Viewer for any “Application Error” (Event ID 1000) or GPU-related errors under Windows Logs → Application or System.
- Use Edge’s built-in tracing (edge://tracing) or Performance tools (F12 → Performance) to record what happens just before a hang.

Let me know how it goes!

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Emmanuelle Driz 35 Reputation points

2026-03-09T19:01:47.5666667+00:00
Currently have a test environment for clean browser and OS. Slowly rolling out elements in our production environment to it. Have yet to get back results on this.

Strange thing is nothing is produced in crashpad/edge://crashes. Window goes to a not responding state but we never get the window that gives the option to Wait or Close.

Not detecting any GPU or CPU spikes. In my experience tend to happen more when there's a hangup in writing a lot of stuff to the disk but we are not observing that either.

For app errors at least on the machines there are a few netsh errors event ID 1000 but none of them are logged at the times of the lockups. No errors for GPU in either Application or System

There any non-Edge bound tools that I can check out to try and nail down the cause? Both Edge tracing and Dev Tools also lock up when the browser experiences the lockup as well. Did manage one recording on one machine.

Thanks for responding. Will keep plugging away with the team to find the root cause.
Alex-L 3,450 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-10T14:50:18.9366667+00:00
Hi Emmanuelle Driz

If you find anything or want to feed this back officially, the best places are:

Microsoft Edge Feedback Hub edge://feedback

This goes directly to the Edge engineering team. Include “Windows 11 23H2”, “Edge 145.0.3800.82”, and note that this is a hang / not responding state with no crashpad output.

Windows Feedback Hub (OS‑level hangs) Feedback Hub app → Desktop Environment or Apps > Microsoft Edge

This is important since your symptoms point to a user‑mode hang rather than an Edge crash.

Thanks for circling back and sharing progress, even partial findings like this help build a clearer picture.

Hopefully you’ll be able to narrow it down as the clean test environment fills in, and if you do, it’ll be valuable for a lot of people running 23H2.
Emmanuelle Driz 35 Reputation points

2026-03-10T16:08:10.59+00:00
So an update:

Adding everything short of our environment policies we have so far not been able to recreate issue, so we are investigating browser policies that might be the cause.

We have started going down the path to investigate if this is an authentication issue of some sort. We do have SSO in our environment and some are angling that there's some sort "check" that is happening and the hang is some sort of network service timeout. One difference between 23H2 and 25H2 is how the Web Account Manager and Network Connectivity Status Indicator function and supposedly 25H2 does a better job handling it without the network hangup.

Any comments on this angle?
Alex-L 3,450 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-12T14:54:45.1166667+00:00
Hi Emmanuelle Driz

Yes, that’s a credible and well‑supported angle, and your findings strengthen it.

What you’re describing fits a WAM / SSO‑related synchronous wait rather than an Edge bug:

Edge depends on Web Account Manager (WAM) for SSO, token refresh, and identity state.

If an auth or connectivity check blocks (proxy, VPN, identity service, conditional access), Edge’s UI thread can hang without crashing, which matches:

no crashpad data

no “Wait or Close” dialog

no CPU/GPU/disk spikes

Browser policies tied to SSO, sign‑in enforcement, or network awareness are a common trigger.

The 23H2 vs 25H2 difference you called out is key. Changes in how WAM and NCSI are handled asynchronously would explain why:

the issue disappears in 25H2

it cannot be reproduced without enterprise policies

the hang feels like a network timeout rather than a browser fault

Focusing on Edge policies related to authentication, SSO behavior, and network checks is the right next step. This hypothesis aligns cleanly with all observed symptoms and why traditional Edge diagnostics haven’t helped.

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Microsoft Edge on 23H2 intermittent hangups/not responding *Solved*

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