Thank you for the quick reply. In your second step, did you mean with protocol filtereing *DIS*-abled? Or are you saying try two different things? That is, disable protocol filtering and see if problem goes away, and if not, then re-enable protocol filtering and uninstall Malwarebytes?
And when you say “temporarily” uninstall malwarebytes, does it mean that if the problem goes away, I should leave malwarebytes permanently uninstalled?
Is there overlap in functionality between ESET NOD32 and Malwarebytes? That is, do you think having Malwarebytes on the same system as ESET is redundant and I will be OK with ESET alone?
The ESET trial was going fine for several days. So what is it that triggers this sudden CPU problem? It is important to me to know that this is not going to keep happening randomly.
Thanks again.