Android Studio freezes when connecting to APK ... (whole AS process, not just installation)

I have this problem that Android Studio completely freezes (preventing me from doing anything) when accessing the APK install ... part. The only way to fix this is to go to Task Manager (yes, in Windows) and force it to close.

It used to only be done once a day or so, but in the last few days it started to freeze a couple of times a day and it infuriated me.

I tried increasing the heap size to 3gb thinking it was running out of memory, but when this freeze occurs, the task manager only indicates about 1.5gb of usage. Also the hardware is not a problem.