Desktop becomes unresponsive and I get weird news pop ups

[Zakii]

Hello,
Whenever I leave my laptop idle for like 10-15 minutes and come back , I find that the whole desktop is unresponsive and I get some random news pop-ups on screen (just a small, grey rectangular with white font). This issue only lasts like 2-4 seconds, then it goes back to normal. The taskbar is not affected at all during the problem, just the desktop and right click. I have tried using Malwarebytes, reinstalling Windows, but to no avail. Sometimes I get those pop-ups when alt-tabing between apps. The news seems to be official news from MSN I guess or something similar. So no one is advertising anything, and I can't click on it to take me to a link. I will provide a screen shot of the pop-up when possible.

 

[rgd1101]

try a different screen saver?

 

[Zakii]

try a different screen saver?

I think screen saver is turned off, as I have it on none.

 

[Zakii]

I seem to have fixed the problem.

I will leave the fix here (I don't know exactly which one did the trick):
Disabled Notifications in Windows Settings.
Disabled personalized ads.
Disabled show sync provider notifications from folder options.
Turned off widgets from taskbar settings.

 

[bacca400]

Ah. That news widget is a Microsoft thing and may be used as the screen saver sometimes.

On my home PC I turned off that whole news widget. It's a nuisance. And when clicking on a link in it it will ONLY use the Edge browser now.