Hi, I came here today and registered as a new forum user just to report this issue and find you've beaten me to it!
The solution for me was, when you are at that repair menu where you choose Safe mode (i.e. press F8 on start), choose the very last option to Disable Early Launch Anti-Malware protection. Only then was I able to get a normal boot and access the computer.
Now, I have no idea if that is a permanent disable or a one-time thing, so I uninstalled all ESET products and installed them again (security product and agent).
I'd like to better understand what went wrong. This happened after latest Windows updates for Server 2019 and selecting in the ESET ERA Console to update the client modules to the latest version.
Afterwards I opened a ticket with ESET but the tech had no idea what was talking about and never heard of "ELAM" (Early Launch Anti-Malware) protection. He just said after the initial scan, run the scan again. Thanks, Pal!
Bob