Locked Windows 10 computer and a blank, blue, white or black screen while browsing

Kjell Gunnar Birkeland Bleivik 09.27.2018. Last updated 04.06.2019. Status: May be updated, even years from now.

Before we start, I reccomend that you watch this video by ThioJoe that also has his own Discord server where only the coolest kids are allowed.

I have a lot of computers. This short article is written on my laptop using the Opera browser to search for relevant information. I take a complete virus scan of my Windows 10 workstation while writing this article. So long the scan has lasted for about 8 hours. I just looked at the computer that is now finished and it found zero problems among the nearly 5 million files scannned. So the problem is not a known virus on my computer.

That is also what I thought. I think the problem is a browser error, or a web (e.g. a robot, AI or man in the middle) attack on my Ip. The problem may even be at my ISP since they had some problems a few days ago. I always try to turn such an incidence into an advantage, where the last is to buy a new, hopefuly better and more productive computer. But so long the 5 year old computer with 30 Gb memory, a 300 Gb Flash system disk and 3 Tb storage has functioned excellent. So I will not buy a new computer this time unless that is best. Hopefully I learn something interesting and good enough may be best this time.

Now what is the problem? While I browse the web with Google Chrome or Vivaldi, my favourite browsers, suddenly the screen goes blank with a colour imitating the page I last visited. This is a very nasty problem, since I am not able to shut down the browser with Alt + F4 or shut down processes with CTRL + Alt + Del. The computer is completely locked. The only way to continue is to shut down the computer and restart it manually. Now it is even worse, since the many options of resetting the computer to an earlier state does not work. Then you will say, it can not be your browser since you are not connected to the internet while you start the computer. You may as I use another computer and search online for information (see the semantic links at the bottom). You may go to Vimeo, YouTube, Daily Motion or whatever is you favourite video sharing platform and search for help: windows 10 locked. Most probably it will not help you. Some videos assume that you are logged in and can reach your processes hitting CTRL + ALT + Del. A lot of videos instruct you to edit your registry weith regedit. Most of them will not help you if you have a problem similar to mine. If you search for my browser freezes windows 10 (where you replace my browser with the browser that you use) you may be instructed to delete your browser and then reinstall it. That may help you. Export the browser bookmarks, etc. that you need to a file before you delete the browser.

Has my computer experineced a very evil BIOS attack? So far I have not cleaned the computer and initiated a full system restore, by not keeping any files and apps. That is no problem since I have at least 2 backup's of everything important. Sometimes I even regard it as an advantage to take an autumn clean of the computer and reinstall everything. But first I will see what happens. You may think, why not take a backup of your browser bookmarks and other files and delete and reinstall Chrome and Vivaldi. Not an optin so far since I am testing a lot of browsers. Is there a browser conflict since this only happens while browsing the web?

Now I have started to use Microsoft Edge, since that browser should be most compatible with the operating system, and so far I have not experineced the problem with that browser. If I choose to delete browsers, I start by deleting Vivaldi and see what happens. Then the other chromium browser, Google Chrome, and finally Opera that I don't use very often after Operas son, Vivaldi as a new browser had more advanced options. I will not delete any Microsoft Browser, since they are so intimately connected to Windows 10. If that does not work, I have to take a new install.

Will the problem fix itself since I have auto update of both the OS, Chrome and Vivaldi? Will the problem happen with Opera and / or FireFox? I may not write an update of this article and explain what happened since I have more important things to do. A complete reinstall is very easy on Windows 10 (excellent Microsoft) and if the worst happens, you are most often able to restart the computer in safe mode + networks. My last option is as I wrote above, to buy a much stronger rack computer, with 256 (512) Gb memory if there is one, many processors and multiple screens. That is a future project, but not now since it is too early to know the future.

I only have problems with the computer while browsing the web, and the only way to not have your computer infected via an internet page, is disconnecting the computer from the internet. That is not the problem so far. I can still work on my computer loading resources to the internet from my hard drive. One last remark. The computer most often crash while viewing a (not porn) video on the internet. See the articles below for more information on that. But since it also happens when viewing text pages, I don't think the problem is video related. So in order of priority, my further problem identification (and fix) is:

Identify if the problem happens while using other browsers
Will the problem heal itself via browser and / or OS auto update?
Delete and reinstall affected browsers. It is very interesting if the problem is browser dependent.
Full system restoe, deleting apps (what we before the smart phone age called programs) and personal files.
Buy a new, for me much more efficient and productive "super" computer

If you found this article using an indexing machine (search engine), I hope it helped you. KW query:

windows 10 locked computer + blank screen when using a web browser

and variations (imagination is more important then knowledge) thereof.

Semantic links:

Browser market shares are changing dramatically.

Kjell Gunnar Birkeland Bleivik 05.16.2010. Updated 09.03 2018.

Until an independent scientific report is published, we stand by our principle that we recommend Opera for the new surfer and every online shopper.

The above statement was written may 16th 2010. Much has happened since then. Google Chrome is naturally the most used browser in the world since it has been advertised on the webs dominant search engien. Note what we also wrote on the 16th of may 2010:

When Google, the worlds biggest SE started to launch its own chrome browser, we could expect a dramatic change in market share for the different browsers. And the browser soon gained popularity because of it's simplicity and because it was fast. The in our view most secure browser, Opera made a boost when Microsoft decided to offer a choice among 12 browsers. According to that article Opera is the most popular browser in Russia. Generally it seems to be popular in eastern europe, so if that were representative for the whole world, we could expect a much larger market share for Opera.

If you refresh this page in your browser, you will get a new randomly chosen video of 6 YouTube videos. One reasen we randomlys choose a video, is that the percentage of broken video links are larger on YouTube than on Vimeo, accroding to our experience.

The last part of the short 2010 article was this section:

Mr market has his own rule, and some say that he is smarter than the average person. Who is the average person and is he samrter than those who use the Opera browser when they shop online? I think only a thorough scientific hypothesis testing could answer that question. Until and independent scientific report is published, we stand by our principle that we recommend Opera for the new surfer and every online shopper.

We are still not aware of a serious scientific report on this subject. If you are, please send us a link to the report or send it as a PDF document (not as an email attachment :-) ).

And now Opera has a true son, Vivaldi, that is our preferred browser for some tasks. As an example, if you need to browse your browsing history log, Vivaldi is much better than any other browser. Google Chrome is bad on this, unless you find the plugin that fix it. Is that plugin better on this specific task than Vivaldi? I doubt it and will not use that plugin, since I minimize the use of browser plugins (that may open a backdoor to your system disk).

If you use Opera, this video shows fine, but if you use Operas son, Vivaldi, you get the following message:

Yo, sorry ...

Please update your browser or try a different one.

But this DailyMotion video shows fine. As always, the devil is in the details, at least 09.03 2018.

Or you may try Vimeo that has a video with the same, but not identical message.

What aout FireFox Quantum? Should you switch browser?

No, is our experience, since only Chrome, Opera and Vivaldi show old video code correct among our tested browsers in alphabetic order:

FireFox
Google Chrome
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Opera
UCBrowser
Vivaldi

But FireFox has some nice features like CTRL + Shift + M that tests if a page is responsive. It is also very easy to take screen shots of a page in FireFox, In the upper right corner og the address bar, there is three ... that are clickable, with 6 options as of 09.03 2018. One of them is Take a screenshot where you can mark an clip a part of the page or take a screenshot of the full page.

The best know feature to our knowledge of Chrome and UCBrowser is the ability to save n pages in a single folder with the shortcut key combination: CTRL + Shift + D. I have not found that accelleration key in any other browser.

Now, this was a story primarily about desktop and tablet browsers. I know people that use Chrome on the iPhone and some say that Opera (what about Vivaldi?) is still the best browser on smartphones. So I have not tested the Safari browser. I leave it to other people to do that. I don't use a computer as a telephone. I call from an old mobile phone from the stone age. Don't try to convince me that I will be more productive with a smartphone or tablet than with my 5 year old Dell computer with 32 Gb ram, 3 Tb storage, a touch screen and a touch pad that can be configured like a smartphone if I want to talk to a bot like Cortana or Siri. My children use SmartPhones for surfing and browsing. They are web consumers. I am a producer.

By the way, today my daughters 8 year old son called me from his watch and told me to meet him on school today. He is not allowed to walk along the road alone. About an hour later his mother called me from her smartphone and said that I should go and meet him today. He has already called me, I told her. A watch with an inbuild phone is better for chidren than a smartphone, since it is cheaper and much easier to loose a smartphone than a watch. Will a smartwatch have a minimalistic (hopefully secure) browser?

What does this short article tell us? If you want to present a product or service online that can be viewed in most browsers, you may reach a broader audienxe if you use a presentation instead of a video. Professor James A. Hendler, has a good SlideShare page with a lot of interesting presentations.

If you want your presentations spread, that is also easy on SlideShare with the embedding option that was not responsive when I wrote this article. It is easy to embed the presentation responsively by using iFramely.

"Transclusive" link: F5 will show another slide for the example below.

Example | Slides about the future and semantic web by Professer James Hendler

The global information space.

Kjell Gunnar Birkeland Bleivik 01.14.2009. Updated 09.21.2018.

So by using your personal toolbar, configuring your speed dial page and installing your favourite search engines you can dramatically improve your web browsing and surfing using the Opera web browser.

Finding the right information online depends on your tools. Web browsers and searh engines becomes more and more advanced. Bookmarking sites and social media sites are the latest trend. You may discover sites you don't know on a search engine ande sites like Instagram, Digg and StumbleUpon that has now moved to Mix. Tumblr is now part of Oath (A verizon company) like HuffPost, Yahoo Mail, TechCrunch and many more. You may also discover sites via social media sites like Twitter and FaceBook and video sharing sites like dailymotion, YouTube and Vimeo. The digital (cyber)revolution is more silent, but much faster than the industrial revolutionm, even if the industrial revolution and the internet of things IoT developes at an acellerated pace. We wrote this in january 2019:

Infosys Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: INFY) was started in 1981 by seven people with US$ 250. Today, we are a global leader in the "next generation" of IT and consulting with revenues of over US$ 4 billion.

What has Infosys in common with Google? Both companies are dynamic and adapt to changes. Both companies started we small resources but soon become large companies. In a world of equal opportunities other small companies will have a similar potential. In september 2018 InfoSys and Australian Open, the first of four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, announce strategic digital partnership and are now declared official digital innovation partners. That is what we call adaptation. We wait and see for the digital innovation.

But competition is fierce and a few suceed. Online banking and more generally online business will reduce the cost of financial and other services dramatically. Block chain technology and smart contracts may reduce banks to decentralized IT companies and some intermediaries will disappear. Everything we know about today is going to be disrupted by blockchain technology. It may favour companies like Infosys because of the relatively lower wage level in India than in the west. Those companies that understand the technological and cultural trends will be tomorrows winners. Information and communication logistics are extremely important in this evolution.

Depending on what you look for, you may use a search engine or a portal you already know. There are a lot of sites that compare prices and you can make your own by using tools from Newprosoft like the Web Content Extractor or the Visual Web Spider. The last is a fully automated, multithreaded web crawler that allows you to index and collect specific web pages on the internet. In other words, you can configure your own search engine on your desktop.

Search operators are a great way to target and refine your search. For example, if you want to find US web directories, the following query may help you: Google site:*.us + web directory and you find both regional, general and global web directories to browse. You find more directories if you use the same search where you replace .us with .co.uk since you find directores from countries in the former British commonwealth like New Zealand in the last search. That was written i 2009. An even more precise query is: site:us + web directory.

We will not repeat web searching here, since it is fully covered on the sister page, SurfToolbar. For that reason it is important to choose a good webbrowser and configure it to fit your needs. For some time it has been known that Google has worked on their own browser, and some believed it was the Mozilla browser. But on august 2nd 2008, Google gives another fresh look at their browser called Google Chrome.

"So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web. All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends -- all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build".

It is very easy to configure Opera to seamlessly fit your personal needs. To cite from their site:

"Adding new searches Opera comes with a useful set of default search engines, but you may want to add some of your own favorite searches to the mix. Adding a new search is most conveniently done as follows: (My addition: CTRL + F12 gives you an overview)

Go to the site that has the search you want.
Right-click the search field.
Select "Create search" from the context menu.
Edit the name of the search engine to your liking.
Add a short keyword to be able to use the search engine directly from the address field, as described above.
Click "OK", and the new search is added and can be used anywhere within Opera.

If you want to make the new search your default search engine, expand the dialog by clicking the "Details" button, and check the "Use as default search engine" box. You can also make it your default search engine for Speed Dial by checking the "Use as Speed Dial search engine" box. In the expanded dialog, you can also edit the search string directly and specify that the POST method should be used for this search".

So by using your personal toolbar, configuring your speed dial page and installing your favourite search engines you can dramatically improve your web browsing and surfing using the Opera web browser.

Browsetoolbar is a colletion of international and regional links (ordered links on the menu) to:

Portals.
Directories.
Archieves.
Libraries
Related resources

that we have found surfing the web since its start.