Hello,
I recently updated from Win7 to Win10 on a four-year-old Hewlett-Packard PC. I still use IE11 instead of the new Microsoft Edge browser. I use a desktop showing a nature scene and have a usual assortment of desktop icons. (Side note: after upgrading, my Norton Internet Security wouldn't scan but immediately an NIS pop-up advised me to uninstall and reinstall NIS and then everything worked fine. That was a cool pop-up.)
However, if I had Norton Identity Protection with Win7, I never used it, and recently I've tried this NIP add-on now that I'm Win10. Occasionally, however, I will be innocently browsing on NIP-approved websites on Win10 and suddenly my screen will go completely black (I can't recall if the cursor was retained). Accompanying it will be a single quick HONK noise, as if I got an error message pop-up. But, the screen is black and I cannot know this. Typically, I wait in confusion and within half a minute my computer reboots by itself, I log back in, all seems well, and I am left with a mystery of what actually happened. This happened a few times and I was unable to trace it to anything I may have done wrong (or any add-on).
Today, however, with NIP enabled and while surfing the internet, the screen went black and the HONK happened. This time the cursor was retained and the computer did not reboot. I just sat there with a black screen and a cursor until I decided to shut down the computer via the button on the tower. Turned computer back on, logged in, again all seemed well. However, a mystery is still afoot.
Here's where it gets interesting. I googled "black screen windows 10" (or something similar) and while all google hits spoke only of the black screen UPON START UP which is NOT my issue, one youtube video mentioned the "Windows Key + P" as a possible solution, suggesting that my black screen was the result of this "Windows Key + P" accidentally getting activated, making my monitor present to me an alternate screen that I never set up, hence showing me a black screen! As a layman, it sounded pretty realistic to me as a possibility! Maybe, just maybe, if I get a black screen, I can press "Windows Key + P" and arrow the selection back to "PC screen only" even if I have to guess at it while the screen remains all black!
So, the next time I got the black screen, the HONK, and the cursor, instead of shutting the computer down I pressed "Windows Key + P" and, what do you know, all of my IE11 windows suddenly reappeared. Well, actually only the window frames and the tabs with their little titles in them. The content of each IE browser frame was a blank white and neither clicking on the white area nor dragging the window around the desktop (aka "shaking" the window) would restore the windows' content in place of the white.
However, I saw a new window/pop-up at this time and, while its content also was white, it had this as it's URL:
symres:C:\Program Files (x86)\Norton Internet Security\MUI\22.7.0.76\09\01\coUICtlr.loc/SUSPICIOUSREDIRECT.HTML.
So, I concluded that this new window was a pop-up generated by NIS/NIP in conjunction with the HONK noise. I closed that window/pop-up and then all of my open windows, revealing underneath a black desktop (no nature scene) but with all of my desktop icons present on it. I did a Restart of my computer, opened IE11, disabled the NIP add-on which also disabled the Norton Toolbar, and came to this forum to post my story.
I'm blaming Norton Identity Protection add-on for my black screen issue.
Comment is welcome but at this time I am not excited to bother with NIP again until Symantec/Norton publishes something about my specific issue (not as a start-up problem) and what they can or need to do about it, if anything.
Thank you.