Blank web pages for handful of students (AR, Lexia, IXL)

[MattDPenn]

Greetings all,

I have had this persistent thorn in my side for the last couple years where for the same couple of students they allegedly will get blank white webpages randomly when trying to do their online school work. So far the tally is Lexia (most frequent), Accelerated Reader, and IXL. Part of why this has been ongoing for so long is because frequently I will try a few things, then the teachers go radio silent for several months, then the issue is raised to me again. In one year I recently found out they seemingly found a workaround which apparently either stopped working or they don't want to do anymore, that boiled down to it wouldn't work in certain classrooms but would in others.

I was able to sit with them in a location other than their classrooms for a short while yesterday in which, surprise, no white pages popped up though one of them (the "fast" worker) was only with me for a few minutes and most of that was talking about when exactly the issue would crop up recently. I'm working on setting up a longer session in-classroom. I've done cache clears, powerwashing, swapped chrombooks, verified that the switches and WAPs (newer WAPs installed after issue first started so persisted across network changes) are set up the same across relevant classrooms, tried checking with the student websites support chats but they allegedly don't log records that would help figure this out. Filter wise this has been an issue before GoGuardian was implemented so reasonably sure its not that. It could be iBoss related but we only have limited control over that as our internet runs through another school district (weird rural situation) who owns the iBoss filter.

Allegedly these students aren't ones to screw around (haha) so if we take them doing something on purpose to screw up the pages out of the equation my current best guess is that they're working to fast/clicking things multiple times as I'm aware one of them is known for speeding through things. Given the issue is inconsistent there's a possibility it could be tied to downloading chromebook updates in the background but that seems unlikely. The only other thing I can think of to try would be to give them chromebooks better than what they currently have, previously Samsung 4 and currently HP 11MK G9, but we don't have any better student devices than those models.

At this point pretty much anything my brain can think of logically should mean it ought to be happening to more students so it has to be something these couple of students are doing. I'm just at a loss as to what it could be if its not user self inflicted or whether I'll be able to spot it if it is user self inflicted.

[mfoley]

I was helping a someone the other day, They are having Sites like SplashLearn, Kahn academy just sit and spin.   Inconsistent as well.  

[jwisniewski]

For us, a device reset will usually correct the issue. Sometimes you may get a repeat customer, but some users junk up their machines faster than others. We also lock down our OS to a stable version. Been burned too many times by bad OS updates.

[MattDPenn]

We're locked to the current LTS version as I didn't want to be burned by version updates as well. I did double check and their storage wasn't close to full as one of my thoughts was perhaps storage/RAM was filled with a OS update and the browser didn't have the space it needed to store temp files.

[PieMan]

I'd ask them to take screenshots whenever it happened and forward them on to you.

At least then you can see if there is a pattern etc.