The Great Kaspersky Hiccup of Quarter-3, 2016

[BonzaiDuck]

You can see my threads or posts (both) in Memory and Storage, maybe Operating Systems.

I had a dual-boot Win7/win10 MBR partition, all had been working flawlessly for a good part of a year after creating it. If you want to know why I MUST HAVE this dual-boot setup, I have threads or posts in the "HTPC" forum, and if you're not a complete and total Noob to 30 years of microcomputer technology, you already know what I'm talking about.

And I'm a subscriber to the SiliconDust project -- a "Kickstarter" project for HD HomeRun DVR -- but no luck yet with DRM channels.

The system was overclocked, and as soon as I posted in the SW and OS forums, I got all this flak and presumptuous response dismissing the wisdom of OC. No less -- I was prepared already and for a long time to meet the sieve of possibilities with a panic-free set of tests.

The S*** hit the fan with the October Win 7 updates and possibly also the Win 10 updates, the former introducing a new "Update paradigm" by MS. On a 5-year-old and 2-year-old of twin systems (minor differences), the Win 7 and then the Win 10 systems got borked by the updates. I had asked folks to contribute any common experience. But even for having similar chipsets, or the same graphics cards, or a dual-boot system on an MBR partition -- there is always some little detail of significance if nobody else reports the trouble.

Now. Remember what we've been through this year, announced in Politics & News. From the first campaign debate, two terror hoaxes were timed to precede two debate or townhall events within a couple days of each event. Sure, there may have been a "coincidence," but real terrorists woulda killed them kids in them school districts -- each one at the center of fear for newsworthy terrorist tragedies. Then we had Chinese hackers trying to get into corporate info systems, then the Russians probing the national security apparatus, ultimately hacking the State Department, and pretty much trying to influence the election or the trouble thereafter. There were even probes of state voter registration and vote tallying systems, but there's a great deal of confidence in those systems just for their diversity and the decentralized nature of American elections.

So the Russians are in the spotlight. And I've been using Kaspersky since 2005.

Suddenly, in the midst of all this news and beginning in July with the anniversary Win 10 new-build download, Kaspersky users were experiencing the same symptoms I had in October.

It took me some painstaking effort to track it down, but the cause of my misery which overlaps that of other Kaspersky users was derived from Windows Updates and Kaspersky. Whether or not Microsoft has taken action to "do its bit" for this new cold-war effort, or communication somehow broke down between MS and the software house, is anyone's guess.

If you keep Kaspersky 2016, you only need to roll back your updates -- probably in Safe Mode -- and then uninstall KIS, grab your Windows Updates, and reinstall KIS. If that worries you, you could follow the path I've taken while another 100 days remains on the 5-PC KIS license: Install MS Security Essentials on Win 7, and make sure Defender is working on the Win 10 version.

I've decided to try MSE on two machines. I was wondering what features seemed lacking for the satisfaction of people who've either tried it, or stuck with it. For instance, "Outlook SPAM management" without the Kaspersky plug-in.

SO WHAT DO YOU THINK OF MS SECURITY ESSENTIALS? MS says it won't work with Win 10, and that Win 10's built-in Defender takes the place of MSE. [Something to remember if this thread is of any interest to you.]

 

[John Connor]

SO WHAT DO YOU THINK OF MS SECURITY ESSENTIALS? MS says it won't work with Win 10, and that Win 10's built-in Defender takes the place of MSE. [Something to remember if this thread is of any interest to you.]

Install Bitdefender Free. It's lightweight and pretty decent. You will need to fill in your E-mail, but they hardly ever spam. I've gotten maybe two or there E-mails since I installed it some 4 years ago, I put Bitdefender Free on all the computers. But I have to tell you that standard definition-based antivirus isn't going to help on the zeroday stuff. For that I recommend Sandboxie. I would give access to the browser in Sandboxie, but remember you can't update the browser while in Sandboxie. They do have a forum. Do check them out. Something else I use is the Beta VooDoo Shield. It's not perfect, but can help.

http://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/free.html

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Just an update on this problem. We always DO hope that there are others who have the same problem, but everyone picks different hardware, different anti-virus and security, different software, and even different Operating systems.

I'm going to look into Sandboxie and some of the others. MSE is fine in a pinch, but a growing risk as long as you use it, unless some reviewers are correct in saying that "it should be adequate if you're a Geek." So with John Connor's advice in hand, I tried to snag some reviews of "the latest and greatest" at web-sites.

Guess what? PC Magazine had rated Kaspersky -- again -- as a top player. Certainly, I was growing more conflicted about this the longer the problem with KIS persists.

So I'm guessing this was a Perfect Storm of coincident troubles. After Windows Updates, among the symptoms was a stop code thrown up indicating the NVidia driver. But there was no hardware problem per se -- none with any of it. And by a process of elimination, I discover that Kaspersky was borking my Windows 7 as KIS users have described elsewhere since July.

If I want to buy that 5-PC 2-year license, it has to work on ALL the systems. I can't afford flaky software. But KIS isn't SUPPOSED TO be flaky. I put in a support ticket with "Moscow Central."

The wisdom says to open the "Protection" menu of KIS, disable everything -- every KIS component -- except for File AV. Then begin re-enabling one at a time. this is just as you'd test startup programs by tweaking MSCONFIG.

So the culprit was the Firewall and the "Application Control" feature with "Web cam security." Everything else is fine and dandy. And of course, disabling the KIS Firewall automatically re-enables the Windows Firewall.

I'm waiting for them to come back to me about this, but I have a very good guess -- proprietary motherboard software like ASUS Suite, which accesses hardware at a low level and "changes things." It is programs that "change things" which Kaspersky will throw up as a possible threat. Or maybe it's just a conflict.

But I'm willing to bet that's what it was. Maybe someone else can benefit from my experience.

My "experience" always grows by leaving me feeling like an idiot.

 

[XavierMace]

I'm running a Sophos UTM and have the agent deployed on the desktops in the house. No issues, even with a former roommate who's a walking malware/virus magnet. The same can't be said of the Kaspersky setup at my parents house either (running Win 10). It's had multiple issues and I just find it to be a PITA in general.

 

[Mem]

I can't speak about Kaspersky, but never had any issues with Bitdefender Total Security 2016 on my Win10, updated it to 2017 version a few days ago and still working great , guess I went with the right AV for 10 .

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I can't speak about Kaspersky, but never had any issues with Bitdefender Total Security 2016 on my Win10, updated it to 2017 version a few days ago and still working great , guess I went with the right AV for 10 .

Well, the KIS folks want me to replicate the symptoms and create some trace files they can look at. It seems the symptoms only occur on two twin Sandy Bridge systems equipped with similar or identical software. There are no indications on either an LGA 775 C2D or an Ivy Bridge Z77. Certainly, no problems on the new Skylake Z170. I could possibly even fix it without their help by playing with MSCONFIG and selectively sidelining startup programs. What pissed me off about it was the symptoms caused me to waste time checking hardware.