johngie

The culprit seems to have been my Samsung Android phone, that the router for some reason had allocated to the same IP address as one of our two network printers. All credit to Smart Security for finding a problem that I was not aware of. All three computers on the network had their IP set to automatic as above. I've rebooted everything, router included. So far, so good - I hope it stays like that! Regards John

Thanks Arakasi. I'll work through your advice. However since waking up the hibernated computer the problem has not arisen since. Nothing in the network has been changed recently (certainly not since Smart Security has been installed) and the router has not been switched off at any time. (It, and the desktop computer in the network, are fed from a UPS). I've had NOD32 for more years than I can remember - for all I know this may have been happening before but without warnings. It might well explain why, occasionally, the wireless printer referred to above failed to come online through the network. Thanks all for patience and help

Just to add: I've just looked at the router status and the ethernet port light for one of the two hibernating computers was off. I resumed that computer (and the IP conflict warning then came up on that one too). I then turned that PC off; the port light now remained on. Then I rebooted the laptop on which the problem first manifested itself and, so far, no more warnings. And the wireless printer is back too! I can't explain this - maybe someone more expert than me can! Regards John

Hi folks, Not sure whether this is related, but just returned home, turned on laptop and got: Identical IP address detected and this in the Firwall log: 24/09/2013 18:58:19 Identical IP addresses detected in network 192.168.1.102 192.168.1.101 ARP Two other computers in network presently hibernated; Two network printers attached - one via Ethernet and the other via Wireless; latter is shown as offline (although printer is on). The first of the two addresses above is the wireless printer; the second (target IP shows unable to connect. Just had another identical warning following reboot. And again! Where do I go from here? Not much help in Help! I'm not a "nerd" - I just want the best protection and, frankly, some of these error messages are over my head. I'm beginning to regret staying with ESET

Thank you Janus, as ever helpful!! I suppose the router could have very briefly dropped the connection, although neither I, nor she whom it is prudent to obey , actually noticed it. John

Just to clarify. My concern was that although there has been absolutely no change to my network since Smart Security was installed, it obviously thinks there has been some change to it. I've allowed this alleged new connection, but I'm still a bit uneasy about it since I don't know what it is. I hope I've done the right thing.

This is now poppimg up repeatedly. The DNS address given in the warning is simply that of my router. No new computers or any other peripherals have been added. What does it mean and what do I do?

Sorry if this seems a really stupid question, but coming from NOD32 and Malwarebytes to Smart Security alone, does a scan with SS scan for viruses and malware? I have certainly seen several blocked websites with SS, so I know it detects malware "on the fly". John

Thanks Janus. In fact I was just going to post to say I had found the application that caused it to happen: a photo application called Photo Ninja by Picturecode (a great program for handling camera RAW files). Each time I opened it, up popped the orange icon! However your solution has fixed it - many thanks! John

I've installed Smart Security on a Windows 7 64-bit laptop and generally all's well, except that from time to time it pops up with an orange icon and tells me that Gamer Mode is on. Firstly it's disabled in the setup and secondly I never run anything on this laptop in full screen. How do I stop this annoyance? John PS apologies for double post - server was so slow responding I thought I hadn't sent it

MBAM is now uninstalled completely. Things seemed to be be going well at first, but after some 10 starts I had another failed boot. Same symptoms as before - spinning circle on desktop, icons unresponsive and had to be shut down with a hard reset. I chose to restart as normal Windows, which it did. But unfortunately this issue has always been intermittent, with and without MBAM. Unfortunately I didn't do a bootlog start on this one. The average "rate of failure" does seem to be of the order of 1 in 10 or so, which I believe others have found too. But occasionally I have had three or four fails in succession. John

I will completely uninstall MBAM (although ESET UK only said to give it a delayed start). It would be interesting to know whether everyone experiencing this issue also has MBAM installed. Regards John

My symptoms are identical to yours - with a small proportion (about 10%) of boot-ups failing. This happens on two very different computers (an HP desktop and Lenovo laptop) with the common factor that both have 64-bit Windows 7 and NOD32 version 6. There were no problems with earlier versions of NOD32 on the same machines. Have you done a succession of windows starts with boot logging enabled (as I have done)? This revealed (for me anyway) that the ESET file epfwwfpr.sys was the culprit - that's where the boot process "stuck" each time. That, to me, seems to prove fairly conclusively that Version 6 NOD32 is the culprit here. I accept that there could be other interactions but why only now after upgrading? I have posed this to ESET UK but they haven't commented at all on the implication of epfwwfpr.sys - they just say to completely remove and then re-install version 6. If the issue is with this particular file how is that going to help? I have a month left on my 4 computer license. Having used ESET products for over a decade with no previous problems then, with great regret, I am going to change allegiance if they can't sort this issue out within that time. It's not the only product on the block - indeed some now seem to do rather better on protection performance.

A bit more on this one! I've been in touch with ESET UK support and they too asked if I was running MBAM. That's now totally disabled, but I'm still getting boot failures. So I've spent some time booting, closing and re-booting Windows, running bootlog scans each time. When the boot-up fails, the last driver loaded is always epfwwfpr.sys which is an ESET driver file. (The next file that would be loaded normally would be peauth.sys). Significantly, it is a newer version in NOD32 V6 compared with V5. It's described as a personal firewall driver - since I'm not running ESET Smart Security I'm not sure what it actually does. It might also explain why I never had any issues when running V5 (or for that matter any earlier versions over many years), even with MBAM loaded. I'm hoping ESET will get back on this one, especially since I'm soon to renew my 4 PC licence and I now feel a bit uneasy about that. Just to add to this, going back to the Wilders forum I see that this issue had been raised there too, with no obvious resolution by ESET. Come on guys, you are going to lose customers over this - me certainly. Version 6 has changed my Windows 7 computers from utterly reliable ones to being, at times, almost unusable. Is there any possibility of making Version 5 availble again until this is sorted out? John

Thanks Marcos. However although I have set Windows to write dump files - they are not appearing (I expect to see them in the C:\Windows folder). I've even done a whole disk search for dmp files - nothing relevant to this anywhere. Can't think what I'm doing wrong - can you help? (I've set it not to delete previous files). My Malwarebytes is indeed the paid version. It has co-existed happily with NOD32 for years in XP and, latterly in Windows 7 with NOD32 versions before v.6. The problem has only arisen since version 6 was installed (as an update over 5). For the present I have disabled the startup scan in NOD32 and, so far, no more boot failures.