i have a customer who uses #windows 10, and they said they couldn't reach the internet anymore: all they got was a big black box. turns out, they actually use the taskbar search box to type web addresses, and the search results popup is what went blank. simple fix: reboot the pc.
there's no permanent solution for that because, since #windows 8, microsoft cheated to get decent startup and shutdown times: the fast startup feature.
when you tell windows to shut down, it goes into a hybrid sleep/hibernation state instead, & the next startup is basically a wake-up instead of a true kernel startup.
reboots don't do that. windows goes through a proper shut-down & actual startup.
go long enough without a proper reboot, & windows does strange things. this is one.
@quirk same.
i confess it took me a while to figure out why i couldn't mount the windows drives in linux after shutting down windows but could after rebooting windows & letting grub choose linux instead.