Yesterday, I logged into my HP probook and the screen was white. Googled on phone and found the solution was pressing cntrl delete esc, which worked. Ran a full system scan using Norton, no virus detected. Today I could login with no problems. What was the likely cause?
Second question, today I checked the security history and it says that today when logging in "You allowed signtool to access your network resources". Googled again and found it is Microsoft but also can be a virus. So, ran Norton again with no virus detected. Does Microsoft do this automatically?
Last question, my IP address is always disappearing, according to the Norton security history. It always has, no disruption to internet. Is this normal?
I am older and don't understand much about computers but am very cautious about clicking on links and downloads. Thanks in advance,

Edited by clicketyclick1 at 4:29 pm, Tue 25 May

clicketyclick1 - 2021-05-25 16:28:00

Norton is a hideous program...
1 *could* be explained in part by Norton (being a pig)
2 Hard to say if it's legit or not, but it is presumably Norton telling you this - so it should allow you to get more details on the message, specifically the filepath, which might indicate its legitimacy or otherwise
3 IP addresses don't generally disappear without a disruption to the internet, so far more likely, Norton failed to *read* it correctly at the time...

Final thoughts, Do yourself a favour and uninstall Norton, use Eset instead...
Disclaimer: i'm slightly biased...

king1 - 2021-05-25 16:47:00

I have almost a year left with Norton but thanks for the recommendation.
The info only says local computer traffic description outbound TCP www-http

clicketyclick1 - 2021-05-25 17:44:00

100% vote for dump Norton. Many people have it because they don't know that windows has an already inbuilt FREE antivirus program that's not bad at all.

And Norton has a well deserved reputation as being a pretty poor program. Watch out of you paid for it's subscription by credit card - these days it automatically renews.

Edited by nice_lady at 6:27 pm, Tue 25 May

nice_lady - 2021-05-25 18:27:00

Uninstalling Norton should solve all issues.

spyware - 2021-05-25 18:48:00

clicketyclick1 wrote:

I have almost a year left with Norton but thanks for the recommendation.

to put that another way, another year of pain and suffering. As nice_lady mentioned win defender is built into windows 10 and free and not too bad. Your PC will thank you for it...

king1 - 2021-05-25 18:50:00

OK, but what about the cause of the white screen and signtool.exe? Anyone know about those?

clicketyclick1 - 2021-05-25 18:56:00

clicketyclick1 wrote:

OK, but what about the cause of the white screen and signtool.exe? Anyone know about those?

the white screen could literally be one of dozens of different things... to be able to say which we would need to see a screenshot of what actually happened.

As for signtool.exe - best way to explain that since we don't have any more info about it is,
*either* it is the legitimate Microsoft tool (used for digitally signing files) and Norton is incorrectly reporting it as a problem
*or* it is NOT the legitimate version and Norton is not flagging as malware and/or dealing with it correctly...

king1 - 2021-05-25 19:16:00

Yeah it's quite likely a legit item as Antivirus programs sometimes focus on what turns out to be a 'false positive' in other words some thing that it considers to be a virus potentially anyway but actually isn't.

Grab this completely Free and totally trustworthy tool by clicking the link. It'll download. Save it then run it and trust the results:

https://downloads.malwarebytes.com/file/mb-windows

Once run you can of course delete it assuming it's found nothing. If it does find something it'll give you options to get rid of it.

Edited by nice_lady at 8:12 pm, Tue 25 May

nice_lady - 2021-05-25 20:05:00

nice_lady wrote:

Grab this completely Free and totally trustworthy tool by clicking the link. It'll download. Save it then run it and trust the results:

https://downloads.malwarebytes.com/file/mb-windows

Once run you can of course delete it assuming it's found nothing. If it does find something it'll give you options to get rid of it.

Thanks for this information.

clicketyclick1 - 2021-05-25 22:50:00

it would of course be one more reason to retire Nortons if Malwarebytes finds something...

king1 - 2021-05-25 23:40:00