1

You find something that works well, and you get confortable with it. You come to depend on it and see it as a little code friend that is there to help when you need it.

Then it happens… For some reason, known only to Eset, the entire thing comes unraveled.

I have posted about my bad experiences with Eset here before (blocking LogMeIn and such nonsense), but this post is not to bitch about Eset so much as to chronicle the last time that Eset will ever let me down.

I have been having issues with a client’s PC. It seems that she would lose connectivity to the server for no apparent reason. I tried everything that I could - driver updates, installing a new NIC card, forgoing lines altogether and installing a damned nice ASUS wireless network on which she gets 105 Mbps to the outside and 1.3Gbps inside the LAN.

I had used Slim Drivers Free to update some drivers. Maybe that’s where I went wrong (especially now that you can uninstall devices, but Microsoft has removed the little checkmark used to delete the drivers as well).

Out of desperation, I set out to reinstall her OS tonight. After the initial Win10 Pro install, I noticed little grey pages with sad faces on them in Chrome and some pages would not render any graphics - only text - in Microsoft Edge. Neither browser had any plugins (except the Google docs stuff that comes with Chrome).

I thought it had something to do with the firewall on the new ASUS RT-AC66U router, so I disabled that. But the problem persisted. So I changed the DNS from Google’s DNS to OpenDNS, but the problem persisted.

I disabled Eset, and the problem persisted.

Then I uninstalled Eset, and the problem vanished.

I could see everything. All pages rendered as they should.

To be sure that it was Eset (and not some random web event or setting that just took a while to catch up on the router or PC) I re-installed Eset and went back to Yahoo.com in Edge and Chrome.Unfortunately, my worst fears were realized…IT WAS ESET!

worst_fears.PNG
worst_fears.PNG800×500 160 KB

So again, I uninstalled Eset, rebooted, and went back to the same pages to see the ads in their full glory.

no_eset_no_problems.PNG
no_eset_no_problems.PNG800×475 246 KB

Normally I am not a big fan of ads (except when I am working on some for clients or trying to see a client’s site with no filters), but this Eset behavior is especially troubling because I didn’t know Eset had entered the ad blocking market and I don’t know what else it is doing that they haven’t told me about.

And I am sad. I am sad that something I had grown to depend on has become a major source of problems for me and my clients.

I am not a large corporation. I have maybe 200 clients that I care for from time to time. I cannot afford to lose them because of a misbehaving application and I surely cannot afford to re-image machines only to find it was the very app that I told the client they could depend on.

So this is it… Goodbye Eset.

Thank you for all of the good years that we had together. Thanks for saving my own ass more than once when I downloaded a suspicious app. Thank you for helping me take care of my clients for as long as you did.

I’ll miss you. You were simple. You stayed out of the way. You kept me safe.

I wish you still could.

11 Spice ups
2

To be fair it was yahoo. One might argue it was doing you a favor. :slight_smile:

Is this a case of it having an ad blocker that you can disable and you are upset that you didn’t know about it, or is it blocking ads with no way to disable?

1 Spice up
3

AFAIK Eset is blocking ads with no way to disable. I didn’t even know that was a “feature” of the product. Even disabling HIPS did not stop the behavior - only an uninstall helped.

Just bought 5 licenses of Kaspersky to try. I have 200 clients to switch at some point…

Finding how to disable network scanning in Kaspersky was not easy, and I don’t know why they don’t just set up “My Kaspersky” for you when you buy from their site. FORCING a separate signup for that after you install the product is both confusing and irritating.

But I just installed it…I’ll kick the tires for a week and see how it goes.

4

We switched from ESET to Kaspersky and on the whole I like it better. Not to say that Kaspersky doesn’t also have its issues, it does. Have you opened an incident with them about it? FYI, I had issues with removing ESET. Several computers uninstalled, but left enough of the product behind such that it was running but no longer in ad/remove programs. It also rendered 2 of my servers unbootable after removal. That was fun. Expect the unexpected. I’ve had issues with Kaspersky not wanting to uninstall (when it needed to upgrade), and for the most part their karemover fixed that, but there were a few that I had to manually kill things in the registry.

I’ve learned to never google reviews of any product you have it place as you will immediately regret the decision. It doesn’t matter what the product is.

Kaspersky seems more resource intensive on the clients than ESET did. If you have a 4GB machine with a non ssd drive and a scan kicks off, that machine is going to be mostly unusable until it finishes.

1 Spice up
5

Thanks for the pointers. Is there a way to schedule scans only when the machine is not in use - or to mark certain times (like business hours) as “no scan hours”?

I need to get into UI development. There seems to be a hell of a need for it with most of these companies.

Although the fact that some of it is written in different countries with different languages, customs and cultures will certainly explain some of the disconnects, I would think it wise to build the UI separate from the actual code and let UI builders in each country build what the users of that country would understand most.

But, what do I know?

6

You can schedule scans, and you can schedule them for things like when the screen saver is on or the computer is locked. The issue of course is if you schedule it after hours and machines are off. You could try to wake on lan them assuming WOL is configured properly on all of your computers (for most people, it’s not), and they aren’t laptops that travel home with employees. That leaves you with the choice of not scanning, or kicking off when then the computer boots up next.

7

For anyone wondering, here are the quick and dirty 7 steps needed to exclude network drives in Kaspersky…

kaspersky_network_drive_exclusion_1.PNG
kaspersky_network_drive_exclusion_1.PNG800×604 102 KB

kaspersky_network_drive_exclusion_2.PNG
kaspersky_network_drive_exclusion_2.PNG800×611 119 KB

kaspersky_network_drive_exclusion_3.PNG
kaspersky_network_drive_exclusion_3.PNG800×600 145 KB

kaspersky_network_drive_exclusion_4.PNG
kaspersky_network_drive_exclusion_4.PNG795×604 55.6 KB

kaspersky_network_drive_exclusion_5.PNG
kaspersky_network_drive_exclusion_5.PNG800×619 98.1 KB

well…evidently there’s a limit to the number of images you can post in a response here…LOL

so we’ll continue this little scavenger hunt on my next post below…

8

Ok we’re talking about 2 different products then. We’re running Kaspersky Endpoint Security.

2 Spice ups
9

kaspersky_network_drive_exclusion_6.PNG
kaspersky_network_drive_exclusion_6.PNG800×601 88 KB

kaspersky_network_drive_exclusion_7.PNG
kaspersky_network_drive_exclusion_7.PNG794×604 51.3 KB

And that’s it folks! Just 7 clicks to do something so freaking simple AND NEEDED BY MOST BUSINESSES.

Holy crap…some days I wonder how we all survive with this many computers in our daily lives.

10

Haven’t played with that yet. Usually the Endpoint products are less user friendly than the consumer products, so I start with the consumer version to see if there is even a need to continue to the Endpoint lines.

11

Well if you are using this in a company, you probably want central management which is what endpoint gives you. Kaspersky security center lets you manage policies for all of your devices. It can be a bit complicated.

12

And that’s the rub…I just don’t think it should be complicated.

Why not let end users create scripts that do the most useful stuff for your app - even antivirus apps? You could have a script database (or forum) and your users could help each other - lowering your overall tech support costs.

Am I the only one that thinks about this stuff?

13

If you let end users control it, they will turn it off. This slows my computer down so I turned it off. This blocked my access to this malware infested site that I am certain I needed to browse so I turned it off.

Seriously, they will.

1 Spice up
14

I agree. But I was talking about the end users being you and me - the people that install and maintain this stuff.

BTW, does the business Endpoint model require a proper server and active directory? Some of my small clients are only running peer 2 peer networks of 2 to 7 machines.

15

I don’t know that it requires active directory? You can certainly push the clients to workgroup based computers. Honestly I’m not really qualified to answer that because I’ve never tried it in a non AD environment or without KSC.

Let me tag someone who might be able to answer that.

@andrey-kaspersky

1 Spice up
16

Weird. I went from Kaspersky to ESET for similar issues. Kaspersky had been my goto AV program for years, but over the last few years it had become clunky, memory hungry and causing various issues on my pc’s. Wait until you try to remove it, sometimes it goes cleanly, othertimes its leaves pieces behind all over the place.

Since I installed ESET my problems have gone away. I guess we all have our issues with certain products. Several years ago Kaspersky was great. It was a small light weight AV program that kept all the nasty stuff at bay. Then they started tinkering with it and it grew and grew. Suddenly it needed loads of ram, would hang pc’s for no reason. Why can’t companies just create a great product and then leave it alone. There is no need to add extra services to an AV program such as ad blocker.

If you want to block ads in an internet session use the browser settings. I wouldn’t expect Crome or IE to suddenly become a AV program so why do AV companies feel the need to affect how my browsers work!

3 Spice ups
17

had the same problem so Monday is leave ur computer open day/ scan day

1 Spice up
18

@pfarrell , appreciate the wake up call!

@kitten-of-doom : We can integrate with AD, but do not require it

To deploy Security Center, you have to have a Windows Server. However, it doesn’t have to be on premise. You can have it in Azure . It’s quick setup, you can get trial licenses from both us and Azure and go ahead and try it. However my concern would be - if you are new to our products and especially to the business line, you may have not the best experience. So I’d rather suggest that I connect you with our team who can help you run POC (please PM me if you would like me to). But it’s your call of course.

Also, before you jump right into it, please check out live demos we run daily - there will be a presales engineer and you would be able to ask questions and ask him to show specific scenarios. If you are lucky enough (and we are not :-)), you will even have a 1:1 with them!

19

Is it possible that it wasn’t blocking the ad’s themselves, but maybe ESET was blocking the source of the ads for whatever reason?

20

Hi Andrey. Thanks for the info. That being the case (a server being required for Security Center) o will not be using Kaspersky Security Center.

I can either use the stand alone versions or keep looking for another solution.

I know I hated Tend Micro and Bit Defender when I last tried them, so they’re out.

I just want simple, lightweight antivirus. Nothing else.

No screwy firewall apps. No internet babysitting. Just a good antivirus app that won’t weigh down the system.