qBittorrent portable - latest releases not working correctly

With the release of qBittorrent v4.4.0, v4.4.1 & v4.4.2 portable I have noticed that the program will randomly lock up and become unresponsive.

The lack of response will last from 2 to 30 seconds or so, but will eventually return to normal after that time.

This is not caused by excessive CPU usage by other programs or such and returning to v4.3.9 solves the issue completely.

Does anyone have any idea what the issue with these releases might be?

TIA

Regards
Andy M