Hey everyone, I'm really struggling with my browsers lately and I'm hoping someone here can help me figure this out. I mainly use Opera GX, but it suddenly stopped working. When I try to open it, a blank window flashes for a second and then it just closes. I managed to get it to open by renaming the opera.exe file to edge.exe, which feels super weird. After that, I switched to Brave, but I had the same problem—only opening after renaming the executable. Firefox wouldn't launch either, but Edge and Chrome seem totally fine.
I've scanned my system multiple times with ESET and Malwarebytes, but nothing shows up, so I thought it might be corrupted Windows files. I reinstalled Windows while keeping all my personal files, and at first, Opera GX and Brave worked for about 20 minutes before the issue popped back up. After that, I reset my PC completely and wiped all personal data, only for those browsers to fail again shortly after.
I also ran an offline scan for potential malware hiding in the BIOS, but it came back clean. After that scan, Opera GX worked for a brief 30 seconds, then closed again and all the affected browsers stopped opening. I'm worried that some hidden malware is keeping specific browsers from launching. If that's true, how would it survive a full reset and avoid detection from all my security tools? I'm honestly at a loss here and open to any suggestions!
2 Answers
It sounds like you might be dealing with some kind of block or interference since multiple browsers are misbehaving while others work fine. Here are a few suggestions to troubleshoot:
1. Temporarily disable or uninstall your antivirus and firewall—sometimes they can mistakenly block legitimate applications.
2. Try creating a new Windows user profile; the issue might be related to your current profile.
3. Use Sysinternals Process Monitor while you try launching your browsers to see if there are specific file or registry access issues.
4. Check the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) for any restrictions that might affect these browsers.
5. Run specialized rootkit detection software like Kaspersky TDSSKiller or Malwarebytes Anti-Rootkit.
6. Finally, check the Event Viewer logs related to Application and System errors that coincide with when these crashes occur.
If nothing helps, consider running full hardware diagnostics to rule out any low-level malware!
Looks like this might be related to Microsoft Family settings. If you have it enabled, it can restrict access to certain browsers. Check if your account is being monitored in a way that's blocking those apps. That might explain why Chrome and Edge still work but the others don’t!
Yeah, I think I do have Microsoft Family set up because I get some permissions prompts even on other browsers. It's really annoying that they push Edge so much, though!