[Problem/Bug]: Navigation Freezes or Stalls After approximately 5 or More Minutes!

[PCRacer]

What happened?

We are experiencing an issue where WebView2 becomes unable to navigate to newly opened tabs or instances after approximately five or more minutes.

The issue appears to be related to the extension subsystem, although it is not specific to any individual extension.

Steps to Reproduce

• Launch the application using WebView2.
• Load one or more browser extensions.
• Allow the application to run for approximately five or more minutes.
• Attempt to open a new tab or create a new browser instance or start a new navigation URL. (https://homepage.ssuiteoffice.com/)
• Observe that navigation stalls and the browser instance becomes completely unresponsive.

Expected Behavior

New tabs and browser instances should navigate normally regardless of runtime duration or loaded extensions.

Actual Behavior

After approximately five or more minutes:

• Opening a new tab or browser instance causes navigation to stall.
• The affected WebView2 instance appears frozen or unresponsive.
• No navigation occurs until extensions are disabled and re-enabled.

Additional Observations

• Disabling all loaded extensions and then re-enabling them immediately restores normal functionality.
• After extensions are re-enabled, navigation works correctly again, but only for approximately another five or more minutes.
• The problem then reoccurs and follows the same pattern.
• The issue is reproducible across multiple extension types.
• The specific extension loaded does not appear to matter; any extension tested triggers the same behavior.
• This suggests the problem may be related to WebView2's extension management or extension lifecycle handling rather than extension-specific code.

Reproducible: Yes

Frequency: 100% in our testing environment
Time to failure: Approximately 5 or more minutes after extensions are active

Notes

Because the issue occurs with arbitrary extensions and can be temporarily resolved by disabling and re-enabling extensions, we suspect there may be a problem related to extension state management, extension process lifecycle, background service workers, or internal extension communication channels within the WebView2 runtime.

.

Importance

Blocking. My app's basic functions are not working due to this issue.

Runtime Channel

Stable release (WebView2 Runtime)

Runtime Version

149.0.4022.52

SDK Version

1.0.3967.48

Framework

Win32

Operating System

Windows 10

OS Version

19045.6466

Repro steps

Steps to Reproduce

1. Launch the application using WebView2.
2. Load one or more browser extensions.
3. Allow the application to run for approximately five or more minutes.
4. Attempt to open a new tab or create a new browser instance or navigate to ( https://homepage.ssuiteoffice.com/ ).
5. Observe that navigation stalls and the browser instance becomes unresponsive.

Repros in Edge Browser

No, issue does not reproduce in the corresponding Edge version

Regression

Regression in newer Runtime

Last working version (if regression)

148.0.3967.96

[PCRacer]

It does not matter whether any extensions are loaded, it still creates the same error in navigation. So with or without extensions, it gives the same error results. Only by disabling and re-enabling any extension available, temporarily fixes the navigation problem!

[chetanpandey1266]

I tried to repro this scenario but I couldn't. Can you share etw logs for this? You can use this script to collect the logs: https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/WebView2Feedback/blob/main/diagnostics/script.md

Also can you give a minimal sample app which have repro.

[PCRacer]

This is what we discovered while trying to find the problem...

Here is what happens after a few minutes of operation of our application:

When we try to open a new tab, which then should open the selected homepage, the tab opens, creates a new WebView2 instance and then triggers the OnNavigationStarting event. I know this because our visual indicator starts running, but then no navigation happens. After the OnNavigationStarting triggers, this then opens and stays on the about:blank URL.

The navigation then never happens and no other tabs are able to navigate to our cached URL.

It seems that URLs that are not cached, load with a normal behavior. It is only cached domains that experience this problem, such as our own.

There are three ways in getting our application running again:

1. When we disable and then re-enable the extensions that are installed, the process that the WebView2 is in then gets reset and normal navigation resumes.
2. When we clear the cache history does the navigation then resumes as normal.
3. When the tab is open and the page is in and the about:page is shown, after a few minutes the navigation resumes by itself.

If you wish to test this error, may I suggest you download and run our application itself.

Here are the download links for it, you may choose either the install or portable edition:

https://github.com/PCRacer/SSuiteNetSurferPrometheus/releases/download/latest/SetupSSuiteNetSurferPrometheus32.exe

https://github.com/PCRacer/SSuiteNetSurferPrometheus/releases/download/latest/SSuiteNetSurferPrometheusPortable32.zip

I did try running the script that you provided, but my PowerShell kept giving me massive errors.

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[PCRacer]

I forgot to add that this processes takes about every two to five minutes to appear, the best way to repo this is open the application and let it sit for the time given, and then try to open a new tab.

You will see that the tab opens, navigations starts, but the URL never appears and stays fixed on the about:page URL.

I just experienced this error while trying to respond. All this happened right after the last WebView2 update, before that it worked perfectly.

[chetanpandey1266]

I installed your app and tried on it. I'm not getting a consistent repro.

For the ETLs, you might have to set Execution Policy to bypass to run the script.

If you have a consistent repro, please try to capture an ETL for the whole scenario and share.

[PCRacer]

I m going to close this bug report as soon as we have certainty.

[PCRacer]

This is the error we are currently experiencing, many other websites give the same problem!

#5616

Please make this a priority... my app is not working because of it!

Our web browser uses the "NewWindowRequested" event for each new tab created!