ESET - You are losing my business

Discussion in 'ESET NOD32 Antivirus' started by Recall, Apr 3, 2010.

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  1. Recall

    Recall Registered Member

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    I have been using Nod32 for nearly 2 years now. However it still has incompatibilities with Firefox which have never been fixed:

    1. Downloads freeze, tried the disable scan thing in about:config. Every single large download freezes up my browser. This has been the same through multiple systems. From desktop to laptop.
    2. Starting a cold boot firefox causes it to stutter when scrolling. Nod32 is trying to scan it on opening. So I end up waiting about 30secs or so for it to calm down and be usable.
    I asked many times, and also see in here that I am not the only one who suffers. My biggest gripe is the freezing downloads...So I have ended up ditching Nod32 for the free MS Essentials Software even though I have like 4 months left of my subscription.

    You have one very unhappy customer, are you willing to win me back?
     
  2. Cudni

    Cudni Global Moderator

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  3. Recall

    Recall Registered Member

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  4. Cudni

    Cudni Global Moderator

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    When you say try you mean you did it, change the referenced setting from true to false? How about web protection, if you disable it does it make a difference?
    ~Link to dodgy site removed~

    however, if you are not running Eset, then all of this is academical
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 26, 2010
  5. Recall

    Recall Registered Member

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    I did try disabling to false, for reference I was a beta tester for Firefox when that option was put in. I can see your point about trying different things such as disable web access ( which did not help )

    I guess my point is, I know it is not fixable via settings. ESET are well aware of the issue, but yet do nothing. This is my plead to ESET to actually do something about fixing compatibility with just about the most widely used browser out there.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 26, 2010
  6. siljaline

    siljaline Registered Member

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    While I do not use Firefox as my primary Browser perhaps this solution might address some of your issues, please try them and advise.
     
  7. Brummelchen

    Brummelchen Registered Member

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    we are a free world - get the software which fits your need at its best.
    if you are interested in real help you wouldn't write that!
    one more one less... sigh

    BTW i dont have none of your mentioned problems although i noticed a
    little more timeout at downloads with the latest 4.2 which depends on
    the archive module and the download itself.
     
  8. firzen771

    firzen771 Registered Member

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    ye im not experiencing any of the OP problems either...:doubt:
     
  9. Recall

    Recall Registered Member

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    OK it seems I have got your attention, as two experts have replied. I have only just got round to reading this post. I will test and report back in the morning.

    Brummelchen

    I wrote what I did as in past experience unless you make a big noise no solutions are ever found. I work in sales, and I am sure you have heard of the saying that a happy customer will tell 4 people but a unhappy customer will tell 10 people. You guys do not advertise much and rely on word of mouth, hence my post was worded in the way it was.
     
  10. Brummelchen

    Brummelchen Registered Member

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    ye - i know the problem - and its hard to fight against those mouth propaganda
    as a pro - unfortunately its not only this software.
    thats the reason i read those comparison threads here with long distance, most
    of the written is only user experienced.
    but as a pro you - or me or other - have options to tell - there is more than
    one way to rome :D
    you know the whole story about security - no need for me to repeat.
    and thats what i'm acting on and on and on... who wont hear it - fare well,
    make your luck.

    we are working on a grey part - not black and white - would that be easy :)
    so i would like to help you to stay on Eset because its also my favourite av program.
    but if you are such unlucky its time to change - you cannot really force the
    producer to something - not really - not this product for the masses.
    so you only have the program options at first.

    BTW i have some less security in my browser or files - but the browser itself
    has a bit more security and files go into a secure place.

    anyway - you have 4 months to check it out :cool:
     
  11. Hollowstriker

    Hollowstriker Registered Member

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    Not meaning to bash ESET, but I've been using NOD32 for nearly the same duration as the OP and I'd have to concur with what has been said about the Firefox freezing issues (as reported in threads like this). In my case, I have disabled the scanWhendone about:config setting as well, and I'd say it has helped to some extent for Firefox (The freezing occurs even with other browsers). However, the Firefox still freezes for a number of seconds (seems to be co-related with size of the file being downloaded; larger file, longer freeze) with ekrn.exe spiking to 100 CPU as the file finishes downloading. (The solution by siljaline earlier in the thread seems useful, but for me the issue occurs on smaller files as well, as in screenshot, so has its limitations.)

    image.png

    image.JPG

    The issue is probably not as severe to the point where I would switch to another antivirus; ESET offers pretty good detection and usage of resources overall and I've mostly gotten used to this 'freezing' as part of the tradeoffs of using quality antivirus protection.

    Nevertheless, if ESET ever offered a fix for this, it would be great, as I tend to refrain from recommending ESET NOD32 as these days, simply because not everyone has patience to wait for this 'freezing' behaviour, nor do they want to spend time troubleshooting something issues like this. When coupled with the problem that ESET fails to detect common thumbdrive/autorun viruses far too often [1] [2], it becomes quite difficult for me to explain to those whom I've recommended NOD32, even with their understanding that no AV can detect 100% of threats.

    For a company like ESET which is offering very good value for money (in terms of configurability and feature set), with great support (forums at least; can't say the same thing about email support!), if they can put in that extra effort to rectify these issues, it would bring far more positive publicity to ESET than any huge advertising budget (where I live, they run ESET commericals on TV every so often).


     
  12. Marcos

    Marcos Eset Staff Account

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    Do you mean that disabling real-time or (and) web protection does not make any difference? If disabling either module makes the delay go away, provide us a link to such a file.
     
  13. gisuck

    gisuck Registered Member

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    Hello Recall & Hallowstriker,

    Working for a small business that uses ESET and having a few older machines laying around, I have found that the issue is that the ESET scanner is hitting the same file twice. First with the Web Scanner (just as the file finish downloading the HTTP stream) and then again by the real time scanner.

    I would recommend you at least try Marcos recommendation on disabling the "Web Protection" when you download files to see if firefox is responsive when you are downloading those files and see if Firefox still works. Your ekrn.exe process will be at 100% but it shouldn't lock up firefox once the download is completed. Then, try the following:

    The solution I have found was to be extremely less agressive with the HTTP scanner in those cases, and depend more on the real time scanner. In the Web Access Protection -> Objects, I only selected Files and in the Web Access Protection -> Options, disable Advanced Heuristics.

    This should free up the Firefox application to use, but the ekrn.exe process will still be pegging at 100% for awhile as it deep scans your downloads with the realtime scanner.

    Granted, this is not an ideal solution for protection, but it allows you todo work.
     
  14. Hollowstriker

    Hollowstriker Registered Member

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    I just did a quick test of the few workarounds as suggested by Marcos and gisuck, but the issue is still mostly unresolved as per the OP's post that "I know it is not fixable via settings".


    Anyway, the results are as follows:
    a) Both realtime + Web protection on: Freezes
    b) Realtime on + Web protection off: Freezes
    c) Realtime off + Web protection on: No freeze
    d) Both off: No freeze
    e) Both on (but Advanced Heuristics disabled in Web protection): Freezes


    I suppose the issue is the double-scanning of the files by the realtime and web protection scanner as mentioned by otheres earlier but there's not a lot that I can do about this- it is not practical for me to disable realtime nor web protection for daily use; defeats the purpose of having NOD32 then.


    The file which I used to test is the CCleaner installer (3.22MB) from:
    http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/
     
  15. siljaline

    siljaline Registered Member

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    For those that may attempt to remedy this by using CCleaner, the correct link so that you may choose the correct build that suits your needs is here
     
  16. Hollowstriker

    Hollowstriker Registered Member

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    Huh? I'm not trying to fix this issue using CCleaner. What I meant to say was that I downloaded the CCleaner installer (as a static test file) using Firefox to test out the various workarounds in NOD32 to see whether it would cause Firefox to freeze or not (any other file would serve the same purpose).

     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2010
  17. Marcos

    Marcos Eset Staff Account

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    As for CCleaner, the installer contains 52 files including another installer ytb.exe with additional 182 files inside. Without ytb, the scan of CCleaner.exe takes 1 second on my computer while with ytb.exe it takes 7 seconds due to the reasonably high number of embedded files.
     
  18. Hollowstriker

    Hollowstriker Registered Member

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    I downloaded the build of CCleaner without the Yahoo Toolbar, several times, (clearing cache in between each try), but there is still a freeze as I would expect, except that in this case (which occurs sometimes) the freeze does not occur in the "A few second remaining dialog".

    Instead this happens:
    1. I click on the download link, the page loads [Firefox is fine]
    2. Once the firefox download prompt appears, the download option is greyed out (approximately 5-10s) [Firefox is frozen]

    image.png

    3. When the download option becomes clickable, I click on it. [Firefox is fine]
    4. Firefox hangs for a few seconds and the download completes instantly.

    In any case, my point is that is this behaviour inevitable as a consequence of using NOD32, since any file would take time to scan, and the current program of NOD32 simply isn't able to scan files without freezing the browser? (It is not just specific to this computer, I've seen this on almost every computer which runs NOD32 + Firefox computer, even after a fresh install.)
     
  19. Marcos

    Marcos Eset Staff Account

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    Hi Hollowstriker,
    I've downloaded the installer from the above mentioned link fine. No delay after the download completed with all modules enabled (Win XP SP3). Could you make a video where the problem is demonstrated and put the link to it here?
     
  20. yaslaw

    yaslaw Registered Member

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    I can confirm issue reported by Hollowstriker. In my system (win7x64) is the same. On athlon x2 3800 cclenaer is hanging browser for about 15 sec (after applying settings from http://kb.eset.com/esetkb/index?page=content&id=SOLN2424) . It's only one but quite annoying issue that I have with nod so far.
     
  21. yaslaw

    yaslaw Registered Member

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    I made some video to illustrate this issue. I downloaded crap shareware program which is able only to capture small part of screen, but anyway you can see how looong we need to wait before eset scan the file.

    http://rapidshare.com/files/372212201/1.avi.html
     
  22. Cudni

    Cudni Global Moderator

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    with web protection + archive off I can't replicate any freezes on variety of configs from Intel Celeron comps to Intel i5 series (XP->Win7). The realtime scan is good enough to take care of threats anyway and if it isn't then web and archive scans don't help much either.
     
  23. Hollowstriker

    Hollowstriker Registered Member

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    I have prepared several videos (.avi) to illustrate the issue, they can be downloaded from here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5492449/videos.7z (standard 7ZIP archive, 170MB~)

    The video footage was taken using an external camera and hence shouldn't have had any impact on the system (CPU load, etc.). Each of the video is a seperate attempt to download the build of CCleaner without the Yahoo Toolbar (Slim version) from here.

     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2010
  24. Brummelchen

    Brummelchen Registered Member

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    turn off the av scan in firefox:

    enter about:config in addressbar
    search "browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone"
    and set it to "false" (true = default = scan)

    >> Firefox hangs for a few seconds and the download completes instantly.

    as i wrote before - it depends on the downloaded file.
    EAV can scan inside those types of EXE setups made with NSIS or INNO.
    and due that reason for high cpu usage it seems that other programs hang -
    but in reality they have less cpu.
     
  25. Mark_Phelps

    Mark_Phelps Registered Member

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    I ran into a similar problem -- system freezing on downloads due to 100% CPU usage and ekern taking nearly all of that -- and I too, applied the FF config change. But unlike you, I thought it had been fixed.

    I was wrong -- it has NOT.

    I used your latest post and repeated some of your tests.

    In my case, the key parameter that made the different was the advanced heuristics box in the Advanced Setup for real-time file protection. When that was checked, ekern grabbed all the CPU; when that was unchecked, either no scanning was done, or it was so fast that the CPU didn't peak and the CPU usage in Task Manager didn't respond.
     
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