I opened device manager and checked the drivers but there were no updates suggested and it stated they were working correctly.
Although that is a good sign, it doesn't mean that a new driver update is not available.
To be clear, an updated driver could work better. Generally speaking, it could be better, or it could be worse. I don't even know if you actually need a new driver so to solve the blank screen problem. I just gave you one possibility that, maybe, could potentially help.
I was going to check that item in troubleshooting, as you suggested, and then I remembered that I ran the sfc command late yesterday; it did find and repair some items and I had not done a restart after that so I wanted to test things before doing the troubleshooting step. In addition, before restarting I opened MBAM and selected for it NOT to run at startup.
Specially when doing maintenance or troubleshooting (in general, not only in Avast), it is recommended to reboot. This isolates the steps and changes, and gives you a simple way to individually test those changes and minimize bad interactions.
This may sound strange and unnecessary for some users, but unfortunately Windows has a history of these type of issues, and rebooting tend to "automagically" solve some things.
While troubleshooting and making system changes, you should try to go step by step and reboot for each change. Yes, I know, it is probably annoying
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I had no white screen this time.
Well, this might be a good sign, that you might have found the program producing that "blank screen".
A couple of seconds with a blank screen during Windows Startup shouldn't be "such a big concern". Of course you can try to find the factor that is causing the problem, but if this is only happening once while Windows is starting, and that's it, then probably you shouldn't be too much worry about it.
I mean, too much simultaneous use of RAM may provoke such a situation, and the RAM might be being used by programs, and the video RAM can't put up with so much.
This is only one possibility, according to the specific system. Your particular situation could be completely different.
I manually opened and activated MBAM after everything was loaded. There isn't any absolute reason MBAM has to run at Windows startup is there?
Someone else would have to answer that last question for you .