Thanks y'all!
I decided to uninstall CrystalDiskMark and, in the rare circumstance when benchmarking might be needed, to judiciously rely on Samsung Magician's feature for that. I've also turned off...

To what extent does running the CrystalDiskMark SSD benchmarking utility reduce SSD lifespan? My question applies to all versions of Windows 10/11

On the product's website there is a warning...

Hopefully this RTM will fix the Start Menu issue of periodically becoming non-responsive.