Brave browser on Windows 7 hangs on certain sites

As far as I know, the latest available Brave browser version for Windows 7 is 1.47, and it came out in January 2023. Luckily Brave still works on Windows 7 on my old laptop. There have not been any bigger problems with any web sites.

On November 2023 I noticed that on certain popular newspaper type sites Brave started to hang. There were no warnings beforehand like “Brave has stopped responding” or anything. Brave just closed itself in second when I tried to open those certain sites.

When I restarted Brave. I could use Recover Pages to get the other pages open again, but not those problematic ones.

In \BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application there is ‘debug.log’ file. That log did not give any glue, what precisely on those pages made Brave to hang. There were error messages like this:
“ERROR:filesystem_win.cc” “GetFileAttributes” “ The system cannot find the file specified.”

Both Brave and Chromium browsers are based on Chrome. The latest Chromium browser available for Windows 7 is Version 109. That Chromium version had no problems opening those problematic web pages. I just could not find the difference, what made Brave hanging.

I started to go through every possible Brave setting, to find if I could get also Brave to accept those problematic web sites. Finally, hours and hours afterwards I found that the answer lies behind Settings -> Shields -> Content filtering.

There is Filter List, and you can set check boxes, set different filters on or off. The first filter on the list is ‘EasyList Cookie’, and it is checked as factory default by Brave. I clicked that setting off, and voila! All those problematic web pages again started to work as earlier.

That finding made me also notice what is one noticeable difference between Brave and Chromium browsers. Chromium does not have that Shields-feature at all. Also I do need or want Shields, but there seems not be and place how you could turn it off permanently.

Brave is somewhat faster than Chromium, and I prefer to stay with Brave. As long as it works.