Yesterday I used Windows 10 (ver 10.0.19042) System Restore to go back to a reset point of one hour before. It restored normally (I’ve done this before with no problem) but I saw during the restore process a notice that updating was going on. It was the same message I always see when Windows automatically updates when I close down. But it was unusual to see it in this restore point process.
When the restore was complete, I opened Brave and got a completely red screen with this message in the center: “For your safety, Brave has blocked this site because it is distributing malware or stealing login credentials.” The tab was also red and showed this: “Dangerous site Blocked.” That site is the completely safe opening website I have used with Brave for years. Any site that I attempt to open gives me the same. The Brave drop down menus (File, Edit,View, etc) display but when I click any and every item in the drop down I get a new red tab and red screen with the same warning messages. I cannot use Brave at all now. I cannot access my bookmarks from the drop down menu on the right. Nothing.
When I search my HD for Brave files, there are lots of them so I presume that they are all there - just not functioning. I don’t know my Brave version because when I click Help and About to find it I get the same red screen warning in a new tab. I would simply update Brave but Update doesn’t work either (red screen again). I don’t want to uninstall and then install latest version because I don’t want to lose my settings and bookmarks. I just want to go back to normal. Would appreciate any help. Thank you.
Are you able to share the address of the website that is blocked?
That looks like a Safe Browsing warning. This uses a list of dangerous sites that Google maintains. You can look up the address of that website on https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search to see why it was blocked.
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Thank you for the reply.
It is not just one website - it is every website I try to open. I’d prefer not to name the one you asked about because it is political and I don’t want to light that beacon off here, but it is well-known, used by millions and it checks out at the link you provided.
As I mentioned, it is not just websites, it is many of the Brave functions on the Brave page itself as well. Many of the menu items in the left upper corner and right upper corner - which is all that is showing now when I open Brave. Eg., Help, Settings, Show History, Extensions, About Brave, etc. all bring up the red screen “safety” warning when clicked. It pretty clearly is not about safety but rather about Brave’s brain having gotten fried somehow. I’d like to unfry it somehow in order to not lose my bookmarks.
Any other ideas? Do you know if I can save my bookmarks if I uninstall this Brave and replace it with a new install?
Can you share screenshots of the warning that you see (you can blackout the URLs / website names)?
Also, if you are seeing this on Brave pages, then screenshots of that would be helpful too.
Yes, I can grab a png of the screen and upload it - except I don’t readily find here any means of attaching a file to my messages here. Would you please direct me to it?
Also, I don’t understand your last sentence. I am only encountering (seeing) this red screen warning problem when I am on Brave - or “Brave pages” as you put it. Would you please clarify?
Thank you.
I meant internal Brave pages like browser settings (brave://settings) or Rewards (brave://rewards), as opposed to websites. Are these internal pages blocked too?
Yes, they are - please see the list in my 2nd msg above. Can you tell me how to attach a pic to my messages here so that I can show you?
When you type in a message, it’s the second button here in this screenshot:
(the one with the arrow pointing up)
Here are the screen caps - websites and Brave internals.
Hm, I think you might be using a very old version of Brave. Can you tell me which version it is?
It’s either displayed in brave://version or in the Help menu under About or something like that.
I cannot. When I try to open Help/About, I - guess what - get the Red Screen of Death. I do believe that it is old though, indeed. I have, saved, a Brave install exe file dated Sep '17 and my guess is that is the date of this Brave that is screwed up.
Ok, well, it’s definitely a very old version because I’ve never seen it. I would suggest you download the latest version from https://brave.com/download/.
It’s likely you are running a pre-late-2018 version that’s been out-of-support for a while.
Yes, that was my original inclination. But can I do that without losing my bookmarks and settings, etc. Can I just install the new version right over the old, ie., without uninstalling the old one first?
I’m going to reach out to someone else on the team because that version of the browser predates my time at Brave.
Thank you very much for your help, fmarier. It is greatly appreciated.
I’m going to reach out to someone else on the team because that version of the browser predates my time at Brave.<<
I guess no luck with the reach out. It has occurred to me, though, that my question - “But can I do that without losing my bookmarks and settings, etc. Can I just install the new version right over the old, ie., without uninstalling the old one first?” - is a rather general one and that it would be surprising if the answer hinged on the version of the old Brave. I could be wrong about that, I suppose. But, being up against a wall with this situation, I’m going to ask if you could please answer it as you would if you it were about a version that did not predate your time at Brave. Then I could apply the answer to my situation and it likely will help. Your help would be so appreciated - I’ve got nowhere else to go. Thank you very much.
@flarmath,
He did reach out – apologies for the long wait.
So a few things here:
Yes, you can install the newer version of Brave alongside the old if you want, but not “on top of” or “over” – each version of the browser uses a completely different engine. You will ultimately want to install the new version of Brave, move as much of your data as possible to that new version, then uninstall Muon (the old version of the browser).
Before you do that, you should be able to recover much of the data you have by following a few steps. Please try the following:
- Download and install the latest version of the Brave if you haven’t already.
- Once installed, open the browser and follow the steps here to import any browsing data you’d like from the old version of Brave.
- Confirm that the data has been successfully imported – if it is not, please let me know and we can try and help with that.
- Uninstall Muon (old version of Brave)
To Uninstall: Use the built in Add/Remove Programs Windows feature to uninstall Brave Muon as you would any other program. In addition, to ensure all files have been removed from your machine, navigate to the directories listed above and delete all brave directories. For Windows, you’ll want to check C:Users\[your user name]\AppData\Local\brave.
Please let me know if any of the above is unclear.
@flarmath,
So I was actually just reminded that the import feature (for Muon) was removed some time ago, so you will not be able to import your data as in step #2 above. I believe that you should be able to export your bookmarks as an HTML file manually, which can then be imported into the new version of the browser.
