We too were having these problems, and we too just installed fedex ship manager around the time of the impending strike that was averted.  It is that version  (3709)  We decided we did not like the program itself and have used the online version instead.  So, the ship manager has been installed, but not opened.  It has effected those two desktops with random freezes anyway.  My 2023 PC, QB froze within minutes of start up this morning.  I will uninstall the fedex ship manager.  Another thread shows that we updated from 21 to 23 version Enterprise and all updates, tool hub, fix program, company file, etc.

The server does not have ship manager on it, (it is a server) so I do not know if it freezes there as a comparison.  Our other desktop that runs QB is seldomly used and does not have fedex ship manager on it.

Thanks for posting the possible correlation.