ESET Smart Security 4: A bit buggy

I've been using ESET Smart Security for about a year and decided to try out ESS 4 on my new HP Mini. Downloaded it, and despite the fact that previous versions of ESS worked seamlessly, it appears that ESS 4 did something to my registry and settings.

After installation, plugging ANY device into a USB port brought up the XP Install New Hardware Wizard. Each time, the device drivers would NOT install.

Unfortunately, I had to restore my computer to a previous point before ESS 4 installation and then had to call ESET Support.

Had to do some regedit changes and additional uninstalling of files/folders that the uninstall tool does not remove.

Far more work than what was necessary in previous versions of ESET Smart Security, and far more complicated than most mainstream users are willing to deal with.

Reinstalled and it seems to be working well, except for some resource hogging on start-up where it insists on doing a start up scan. There is no way to disable the start up scan, even in the advanced setup tree.

I haven't given up on ESET just yet, but as I know the bugginess of ESS 4 has been reported elsewhere, I just wanted to offer my own experience as well.

 

which OS are u running?

i have had no problems with it.

 

This. ^^^ I have tried it under Vista and XP without problems. I probably will under Windows 7 soon enough.

 

I have 5 Vista computers and 2 XP. The one I installed it on was the new HP Mini running XP. It seems to be OK now.

My Vista computers and the other XP computer are all running version 3.

My 8th computer is a Macbook, and, well, it's not an issue there.

 

built: glad its doing okay now.

angelic: i tried it on win 7....no hiccups watsoever. but im nt sure about threatdetection since its a new os. on the eset knowledge base, eset said they do not wish to confirm its effectiveness as win 7 is still in beta stages.

 

built: I am having what seems to be the same problem, with ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4.0 - would really appreciate knowing how you fixed it, if you remember any of the details.

On a friend's PC using Windows XP SP3, I found that installing a new USB mouse (Logitech LX6) caused the New Hardware Wizard to pop up, but the detection failed to install any driver - it didn't show the exact name of the mouse, only "USB RECEIVER". I also found that a new PATA hard disk, which didn't require any new drivers, caused the New Hardware Wizard to pop up, and this too didn't install any drivers.

I tried reverting to XP SP2 but that seemed to make things worse if anything.

I will try installing ESET 3.0 and see if that helps. Since 4.0 added support for auto-scanning external drives and was released only a few months ago, it's at least plausible that 4.0 has a bug that interferes with hardware detection.

I have been using ESET 2.7 for some years on another PC, but it sounds like 4.0 is not ready for prime time.

 

New Hardware wizzard?

I never had issues with that (it popping up) when using ESS 4 ... and I use it to this day.
It's possible it got installed incorrectly.
Try removing it, then running CCleaner to cleanup the registry as well ... and then re-install.

As for the start-up scanner ... hm ... I don't have issues with it nor have I experienced any slowdowns due to it.
However, I'm pretty sure it can be disabled by other means if not through the advanced setup tree.

 

Thanks for the reply. I will try the re-install but the PC is a long way from me so may be some time.

I found how to stop the startup scanner in ESET 3.0, which looks similar to 4.0. Here it is since it wasn't that easy@

1. Turn on the advanced setup options
2. Don't go into the advanced settings!
3. In the main ESET screen, find the scheduler option on the left, then find the scheduler entry that does the on-startup scan, and remove the tick from the checkbox.

I found the startup scan really slowed down two PCs (one Celeron 1.4 GHz, one Pentium 4 2.4 GHz, both 768 MB RAM) until I managed to stop it. For PCs that are on most of the time an overnight scan is better so it would be great if ESET makes it easier to turn off this startup scan, in the same way many apps let you decide if the program should run on startup.