I've also noticed that Chrome is not as NPM friendly as it used to be in the past. As to which is more likely to be the culprit, I'm still on the fence.
What I have found as a work around is the following:
- When a Chrome tab starts acting strange with NPM
- Copy the url from the tab
- Open that url in a new tab
- Close the old tab
This seems to solve the problem for a while (a day to a week).
Chris.