I've been using ESET NOD32 for several years without incident, but a few months ago encountered an issue that when I would startup my laptop, it would do so to a blank, black screen. After a lot of troubleshooting and research, the one thing that kept coming up was that this could be caused by antivirus. About a week ago the problem got to the point where my machine was unusable, even with repeated reboots and a full restore from backup, nothing could advance me past that black screen.
As a last resort, I booted into safe mode w/ networking, downloaded the ESET uninstall utility, and went through the somewhat laborious process of removing NOD32 from my machine. Instantly upon reboot, all was well, and I've since been using Windows Defender with no issues. I doubt I'm the only person who has experienced this, so wanted to document the issue here in hopes that it will spur a solution for others in the future. For myself, I'm not sure I could go back to using it even if assured that the black screen issue was corrected. I had not realized just how much the NOD32 program was degrading the performance of my machine, it would be difficult to go back to the slow, halting situation in which I had previously been.
If it would be helpful, I would be happy to post system details as well. If nothing else I will watch with interest to see if this is addressed, as it will impact our organizational decision on using ESET products in the future.