Your post on the computer forum was 22 minutes ago - these are forums, not chat rooms.

If I faced your situation, I would shut down the PC (you may need to click to force Chrome to close), boot up again, clear all history, cache, cookies from Chrome, shut down again, then boot up again. Then run Malwarebytes. You might have just been on a bad website without having downloaded anything.

Report back on what happens.

Thanks, I was finally able to uninstall Chrome. I know it isn't a chat room but after I posted I realized there always seems to be someone here that maybe would help faster. I will do another scan and install Chrome again

I just did another scan and no threats showed. Elmer, do you know how they are able to lock your browser, would it be from giving you a cookie and if so by uninstalling Chrome would that cookie be deleted.

What makes you think you have ransomware or any malware? Other things can cause a frozen system. I wouldn't take any chances though if you do online transactions or do not back up personal files you wouldn't want to lose.

Have you tried to open any photographs or personal files to see if they have been held for ransom?

I'm not a website/html expert, but there are things a webpage can do that tells the browser to hold where is until the condition changes. Many of the controlling websites do that. It's always ok to override and shut down when that happens, but remnants may linger until the browser is cleared.

Uninstalling and reinstalling the browser may not have deleted all the history. For safety purposes, all browsers should erase history, cache, etc, when closed down - too many people never do that and as a result PCs slow down over time and avoidable dangers linger.

In Chrome, Click on the three horizontal lines at the top right, then

Settings

Show Advanced Settings

Privacy- Clear Browsing Data - From the Beginning of time

(Make sure all the boxes are checked), then click on Clear Browsing Data

Then shut down and restart.

Going forward, you can install the Chrome extension called Click and Clean, it does everything at once.

I had a popup on Chrome that locked the browser, couldn't log off, even when I rebooted the pop up came back on with a voice telling me I needed to call a number to get it unlocked. I was not able at first to uninstall Chrome but after the 3rd reboot I was able to do so. My cousin had a ransomware a few years ago that used her camera to take a picture of her which appeared on her screen. This is why I keep my camera shut off and the camera eye covered up with tape

Thanks Elmer, I did try to clear the cache and history on Chrome before I uninstalled it but the locked screen would not allow me to go into Chrome settings. I hope everything got cleared out during the uninstall. I will install it again and add that extension. I am trusting Malwarebytes and hoping nothing was downloaded. This was the first issue I have had with this laptop and I hope it is the last.

It is creepy. I'd definitely have Bleeping do a cleanup. Just because things improve does not mean it is gone - they will tell you that. It's why they do many scans when cleaning up a computer. It's why they advise reformatting is the only sure way. Other things might have already been initiated by the malware that you can not see symptoms of yet. Sometimes there are no symptoms as they work silently in the background.

If you can clear everything out, it seems to act normally after a few reboots, and Malwarebytes finds nothing, I think you can assume you're back to normal.

Cherryfizz. even though, you uninstalled and are reinstalling, you still need to clear the browsing and history. Follow Elmer's directions to do that. After a reinstall, those things, can come back. I would also go and run the free Eset online scanner, to make sure everything is ok. https://www.eset.com/us/online-scanner/   This is an excellent scanner and well worth your time. Good luck to you. :-) Cat

You, also, need to turn off the Restore feature [for your system] to clear it...and then reset a new Restore point if you're sure you've cleaned the offending program from your system. If you don't do that...whatever has attacked your system will remain in memory forever. It goes deeper than just your browser. Neither Malwarebytes..nor any malware scanner...can find it in Restore because...if I'm not mistaken...MS blocks their access to the Window's Restore feature.

Cat, your link was a 404 error but I went to the site and used the scanner which took over an hour to compete with no threats found. Thank you all for your advice and assistance.

Wow, did that scan, posted the above post then all of a sudden my computer went black, won't power up. Using my iPod to type this

Edited to report I got it working again after that scare. I don't know what caused it to shut down and not power up again. I remembered someone at one time saying to take the battery out. I did that even though my laptop is plugged into an electric outlet. I put the battery in and even though I kept pushing the on button nothing was happening. Just about gave up and tried it one more time and the little light on the front came on, took a long time to reboot but it finally did. So relieved. A few weeks ago I could have afforded to get my computer fixed but not now. Gee and here I was thinking I would have to use this off computer time to do some extra house maintenance.

:(

I hope it all works out ok!

Thank's Rob, just edited my post to say it is now working again

Sorry the link didnt work. It worked when I tried it after posting, but, it didnt work for me here now either. I dont think the scan caused your computer not to boot up, since it doesnt do anything to the computer, but scan, just like other scans do. Hoping you dont have some other problem there, that is causing the problems you had in the first place. Did you shut down your restore, and then go back and make a new restore point like Anne suggested? It is a very good idea to do that.

It is working ok now, I don't think it was the scan, but it shut down right after the scan. One of my friends came over tonight and worked on the laptop, not sure what he did. Thanks again.