SwissJay

Same issue also affects Veracrypt when the option to prompt for the password on the secure desktop is enabled. It is now next to impossible to type in a lengthy passphrase without making it visible for everybody else to see while one tries to type a few characters in-between "flashes". As a longtime customer, I cannot believe I will have to wait for the next point release for this to get fixed!! I use both Veracrypt and KeePass so this is a major pain. Luckily the latter allows authentication via Windows Hello! Granted, I could disable Secure Desktop prompting but, uhm, no, why should I have to?!

An update, in case anyone cares I've been in contact with support and they had me run through the "manual uninstall & cleanup" procedure detailed in their KB2289. That fixed my Outlook plugin issue but the firewall interactive mode would still bring my box to a standstill. Meanwhile, a new version was released so I installed it on both my main box and another one I have sitting around to see if I can reproduce the issue on either with the new version. But so far, I haven't had the time. With the firewall in automatic mode, no issues whatsoever though.

I was actually going to do that, but the issue here is that there is a problem with the GUI that is exacerbated when switching the firewall to "interactive" mode, presumably due to the added amount of popups this produces. Even when I leave the firewall in "automatic" mode and leave the PC on for 15+ minutes, the ESET GUI will malfunction when I open it after that time. For example, if I go into the advanced setup, it will show the settings categories on the left, but the right side is completely blank and devoid of any settings to change. If I click around, it will eventually freeze completely but unfreeze after a couple of minutes and allow me to close the GUI. Also, it keeps switching to gamer mode even though I'm not playing games or switching it to that, it just decides to do that on its own. So basically, there is something seriously wrong under the hood of V10 and it's not my place to work around that issue. The product needs to be fixed! I've been working around the Outlook plugin not working properly since V9 and now V10 wants to freeze up the whole PC, so I can't just standby and wait for a fix any longer. Otherwise I renewed my 5 licenses for nothing.

I want to add that I have the exact same issue since upgrading to v10. It only happens once I switch the firewall mode to "interactive". As long as I leave it "automatic", all is well (except for the Outlook plugin hanging Outlook, but that's a separate issue). I just submitted a support request and am waiting to hear back. I'm curious to get to the bottom of this, but I thinksit's some type of dead lock in the ESET kernel driver because it only ever happened with the initial V9 release and was fixed in later V9 releases, but now reappears with V10.

This very issue popped up for me after installing KB3000850 on Windows 8.1 x64. Are we definitely certain that the HIPS module update is to blame?