# Browsers won't open (Windows 10).



## red.dead.wolf (Sep 3, 2016)

Good day,

I hope someone will have the patience to read through this.

I am using an Asus Transformer Book t300-chi with Windows 10 installed. I upgraded from Windows 8.1 immediately after getting it, so have no way of knowing if it's the os that is causing the problems, unfortunately.

My first concern is this, and it has happened before. This morning none of the browsers would open. I tried Chrome, Edge, Mozilla. A blue ribbon would just keep spinning above the mouse cursor. I tried restarting, but it didn't let me click on anything else, either. So I had to do a hard restart by holding the power button. That didn't help, even after several tries. After third or fourth try I decided to wait it out and, both Chrome and Edge, eventually opened. This has happened before, but a restart would usually solve it.

The second problem, and it has been around since I got this laptop, is the screen would go black for around 3 - 4 seconds, randomly. The laptop stays on, and the sound keeps running, so it's just the video going out. After it reappears, there's usually a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark at the right-hand side of the taskbar. I've tried clicking it, but it disappears a second later and everything runs as normal. The problem with the video occurs around 1 - 2 times a week, but seems to be getting worse. I also updated the display adapter, but that did not help.

Thank you for reading this, hope someone here might know of a solution to these issues.


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## OldGrayGary (Jun 29, 2006)

Hi red.dead.wolf ... and welcome to the forums ...


*Non-responding Browsers*
Something was likely hogging critical system resources when your browsers wouldn't start up normally. My guess is that you might not have been able to start much of anything else, either. That could have been a temporary, and unique, exception. (For example, a rather large Cumulative Update for Windows 10 might have been trying to install automatically in the background ... one from a week ago was known to cause a few systems to get a bit unresponsive while updating ... the good news is that most eventually updated OK and had no more trouble with unresponsiveness).

*Brief Screen Blackouts*
I'd be interested to see if any messages appeared with the alert icon (the yellow triangle with the exclamation point). Try to catch it in the act if you can, and post the error message here.

My first guess would be a power issue of some sort ... low battery, power-savings-option setting, mode-change sensor acting up (tablet mode/laptop mode) ... something like that.

*Event Viewer Logs*
If you'd like us to have a look in your Event Viewer error logs:
1) *Right-click* the Windows 10 *Start Menu icon*
2) Select *Event Viewer*
3) Make sure that Event Viewer (Local) is highlighted in the upper left-hand pane.
4) Click on the right-facing arrow in front of *Custom Views*
5) *Right-click* on* Administrative Events*
6) Select "*Save All Events in Custom View as*"
7) Select "*etvx*" from the list of options.
8) *Attach* the file here in your next post.

*Power Options*
And, if you want to just explore some possibilities, check on your power settings. 
1) Visit Start > Settings > System > Power
..... and have a look at display/sleep/screensaver related settings.
2) Visit Control Panel > Power Options
..... and have a look at display/sleep/screensaver related settings.

*Windows version*
One more thing: What version/build of Windows are you currently running?
1) *Right-click* the Windows 10 *Start Menu icon*
2) Select *Run*
3) In the run box, type *winver*
.... and make a note of your version/build & add that info to your next post here. If you have received the Anniversary Update, your Windows 10 version will be 1607, the build version will depend on what Cumulative Updates have arrived so far on your computer.

Let's see what turns up.


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## OldGrayGary (Jun 29, 2006)

P.S. almost forgot to ask: is your system still under warranty?


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## red.dead.wolf (Sep 3, 2016)

Hi,

Thanks for taking the time to look into my case. Hopefully the issue with the browsers will eventually resolve by itself.

I did everything as you described and ended up with an evtx file, but I can't add it here due to limitations. Should I add it as a txt file, instead? I took a quick glance at it, and though I don't quite understand it, 4 error events happened immediately after turning the laptop on. I also went through my power options and set screensaver and sleep mode to "never", see if it helps.

The Windows version is 1607 and build is 14393.105

And yes, the laptop is still under warranty, but I would really like to send it back as a last resort only.
Thanks again for your help.


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## Rich-M (May 2, 2007)

When something like this happens on a new pc I always advise the best procedure is to return the item. Buying a new pc should not lead to this kind of situation and if this occurred right after upgrade to Windows 10 then the likelihood is that this caused it and networking issues is one of the things I find with upgrade of Windows versions quite often.
Now you can prove that did it by going into Pc Settings, Updates and Recovery and do an easy restore back to Windows 8.1.


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## OldGrayGary (Jun 29, 2006)

Hi again all

The "Go Back to Windows 8.1" will be available in Start > Settings > Updates & security > Recovery > "Go Back to Windows 8.1" for 30 days after the day you upgraded to Windows 10. After that, the option disappears (but you still might be able to do a factory reset if the ASUS recovery partition & recovery program are still intact).

If you can catch that yellow triangle alert message, that might be a good clue (I imagine it might be tricky to see it, especially if it only appears for a short period of time .... but let us know if you happen to catch it)....

If your system has the built-in diagnostics available at system power-on time (usually through pressing a special function key or two), you can run some tests to make sure nothing hardware-related is causing trouble. If something doesn't pass, your warranty will very likely cover its repair/replacement without any additional cost on your part. The only thing you lose is time (warranty repair can be unfortunately slow). But at least you'd get back a working system.

Those Transformers are a super-thin bunch - did you happen to notice if things were warmer than expected at any point? Some of the Mac Airs had the same processor as the one in your Transformer, and some models had a bit of trouble overheating. If your Asus didn't come with a handy temp utility, you can try one of the simple and generally free temperature reporting programs (CPU-Z seems decent) - that should report with some accuracy how hot or not things are...

As far as the evtx file is concerned, see what happens if you 'zip' it. That might make it uploadable here.

If the black-out of the screen is helped by your power option tweaks ... we'll have been lucky. That's a nice easy fix, when it works. 

Time will tell!


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## red.dead.wolf (Sep 3, 2016)

The thing with the yellow triangle is that it doesn't show anything if I hover over it, and disappears immediately if I try clicking it.
I haven't noticed any options for diagnostics upon power up, but will dig online to see if the laptop has one. I agree with you Rich-M that issues like this shouldn't be present on a brand new piece of tech. I will return it, if all else fails.
I tried checking the temperature, and the cpu seems to run at an average of 41 degrees celsius, which is around 106F. It does become quite warm when doing anything hardware-intensive, like playing a game, which isn't surprising. Only once did I notice that after waking it from sleep mode the bottom right corner, which is probably where the cpu is located, was hot. No apps were running in the background, either. I attached the event log for you to check out. I also contacted asus, just in case, to see if they might have any solutions for it, though I highly doubt it. If the event log doesn't help I will just send it back. No point in wasting my time, and yours, trying to solve a problem that shouldn't be present on a new laptop, anyway.


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## OldGrayGary (Jun 29, 2006)

Hi again


The Event Logs go back as far as August 30th - is that the day you upgraded? It's quite a lot of Errors and Warnings for such a short period. 

It's not that unusual for a lot of silly warnings and error messages to show up during the upgrade process. Often some of the errors make no difference at all. When the errors continue to happen in volume for a week, that's cause for some concern.

It appears you had to "hard power off" your Transformer quite a few times in the first few days, yes? (you had to push down and hold the power button for four to ten seconds to shut it off)? If you didn't hard power off, it looks like the laptop suffered several losses of power that were unexpected. [This can happen if Windows 10 "crashes" hard enough .... but I didn't see any "fatal" errors (or "Blue Screen" errors) ... so - if you didn't hard power down, something wasn't going very well in the first few days]. Truthfully, if you were having to hard power down, things weren't great either way.

Since you've contacted the vendor - see if they know of any issues for your model & the upgrade process to Windows 10. For example, they might know of an Asus utility for your Transformer that worked fine in Windows 8.1, but doesn't work in Windows 10. It might be that a clean install of Windows 10 would work better.

I prefer to let vendors repair out-of-the-box issues. But there's a catch to your situation: if they replace your Transformer with a new one, would it come with Windows 10 installed or Windows 8.1? If it comes back to you with Windows 8.1 -- and you don't like Windows 8.1 -- that could be a problem. Your "digital entitlement" to Windows 10 on your current hardware is valid indefinitely. But if you get a new Transformer from Asus, it will be different hardware (different serial number for the motherboard) ... so you'd want to make sure that if they send you a new one, it comes with Windows 10 (if that is your preference). The free upgrade to Windows 10 period ended (officially) on August 29th (for the general public). The free-upgrade to 10 issue is only a problem if it turns out that your laptop has to be replaced. It's not an issue if they can simply repair it.

Depending on your warranty - you might simply opt to return it for refund, & try a newer model with 10 already on it. Lots of options.
_______________

Let us know if you want to try extensive troubleshooting. It can take a fair amount of time. On the brighter side of things: your errors were calming down a bit on Sept 4th and 5th. 

On the odder side of things: your log shows Task Scheduler errors and Kernel errors that it reports as having occurred on 9/13/2016 ... which is impossible, of course, since 9/13/2016 won't show up until about a week from today! --- it's possible, I suppose, that at some point your Time/Date setting got set to a future time/date.... and that the error was found and fixed.

If you want to check on a few easily fixable problems: uninstall/reinstall your McAfee security program (or try an alternative), and uninstall/reinstall Google Chrome. They are both generating misconfiguration errors. (not too surprising for McAfee, but unusual for Chrome).

I've rambled on for a while here - sorry about that. I'll let your eyes rest!

I'll check back sometime tomorrow, after I've rested mine too (hopefully a good restful night's sleep!)


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## red.dead.wolf (Sep 3, 2016)

I got the laptop on the 27th of June this year, and upgraded to Windows 10 on the same day, right after powering it on. The first screen blackout occured around 2 weeks later, while watching a youtube video. Since then, it has also blacked out during a video game, and while simply browsing the web.
I've had to hard power off several times because of the unresponsiveness, the OS would freeze as far as not letting me restart the normal way.
Today, I got a blue screen - "Driver Power State Failure" - and I remembered that I had a blue screen several weeks back saying - "Critical Process Died", or something like that. I suppose it's safe to say that the situation is getting worse.
Following the suggestion from Asus, I reinstalled Windows and updated the display driver, but the screen blacked out within an hour.
I contacted the retailer and will likely return it in the next few days. In case I get a replacement, I'm pretty sure it will come with Windows 8.1. And, even if it can't be upgraded to 10, I don't really mind, as long as it works properly.
I will post if I encounter anything new. Either way, thanks for your time.

It's weird, actually, I have no McAfee installed...


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## Rich-M (May 2, 2007)

I am starting to personally believe more and more the best version of Windows for a given system is the version that was made for the given hardware system so staying with Windows 8.1 has 2 pluses as I see it
1) It was made for this hardware
2) it won't be an upgrade of an older OS


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## OldGrayGary (Jun 29, 2006)

Hi again


How does time pass so quickly? ... Seems impossible that a day has gone by.

It does seem like the safest protection for your investment in the laptop is to let the vendor give it a good thorough once-over. The fact that the screen acted up within such a short period after a fresh reinstall is something that just might be hardware related. And this sort of hardware issue is almost always covered by the warranty.

Hope it goes well, and you have a steady, reliable laptop soon. 

[I confess that if the vendor figures out what exactly was causing the problem, I'd be interested to hear what they found].

No worries about the errors, especially if you are sending it to the vendor. The McAfee might have been leftover from your original Windows 8.1 installation (many laptops come with a 30-day, 60-day, etc. trial version of an antivirus ... sometimes even longer). If you had such a trial version installed by default on that Windows 8.1 system, if might well have gotten fairly well tangled up in the Windows 10 upgrade (especially if it wasn't completely setup yet). 

Windows 8.1 .... is a reasonably OK operating system. The core of it is really quite nice. The big trouble for many users was the stubborn my-way-or-the-highway new interface: far too inflexible, too different, far too few options for users who were happy navigating through menus in an older manner. (Most older versions of Windows, for example, would let users still use a variation of the Start Menu that resembled previous version [a "Classic" menu]... sadly, Windows 8 didn't allow that choice -- [even though many of us testers pleaded with them to do so during the beta testing]... so the sales and popularity of Windows 8 were pretty dreadful.

But the system core is quick and agile. The interface can be made to look like a Windows 7 menu if so desired (but not by built-in choices: you can use a free third-party program such as "Classic Shell" if you prefer the older style Start Menus). 

The main advantage of Windows 10 is simply that it will be supported a bit longer.
_______________

Throw some salt over your shoulder, avoid walking under ladders or scaring black cats .... and we'll hope that some good fortune comes your way


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