@iCaspar Do you have Windows Defender enabled Caspar?

I reported an issue in a 2021.x release moons ago now which Jetbrains resolved, but there's still endless people complaining in the same ticket of the issue. There's been updates to that to say that the problem lies with Windows Defender now (I use ESET NOD32 which explains why I don't continue to see the issues after initial resolution).

As you mention a Windows update, it certainly may be related.

Maybe useful? https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-286059/IDE-freezes-and-hangs-2021.3.1-on-indexing-of-WSL-project

@ianh
Yes, I feel certain that Windows Defender is in play, as well as a lot of other company-specific "security" packages and "big-brother-ware" the company insists on. :(

In spite of the Defender issue, this had been working fine until last week, making the latest Windows update the suspected culprit.

@iCaspar The comment https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-286059/IDE-freezes-and-hangs-2021.3.1-on-indexing-of-WSL-project#focus=Comments-27-6533612.0-0 gives a few ideas for adding dir exclusions to Defender, which might help? (I'm assuming these help due to indexes and caches seeing as they're actually Windows (rather than WSL) paths.

I do all my dev work in Docker within WSL2 and haven't noticed any issues like this since JB resolved the problem (in my case).

Sounds like you don't have the luxury even temporarily disabling Defender to test this scenario?