Friday night I got a call from a client with an interesting situation. Their Windows 10 laptop started blinking a black screen while it was being used. I connected remotely and attempted to find out what was going on. It was very hard to get anything done but I did manage to start the Windows Task Manager with my remote program. I looked through the processes for anything unusual and didn’t really find anything. The Anti-virus software was checked for problems and it hadn’t found any infections. It had blocked many safe files which it shouldn’t have and this indicated something was funny. I checked the date on the software and it was from last year. My hunch was the anti-virus software was acting up so I removed it. It wasn’t easy since the Windows start button was hidden and the blinking continued.
We downloaded the latest version of the anti-virus software and expected it to install with ease. We got an internet error every time we tried. After several attempts and cleaning the registry and temp files and no success, I almost gave up. Then I had a n idea to disconnect the cellular hotspot and reconnect it. This worked and my client reinstalled the anti-virus software without the error message.