chrisj

At the moment I am using a hospital public Wi-Fi so yes, there is an intermediate process involved. To be fair it is not the message about a failed update that is the problem. That does not appear for quite a while, as you suggest. It is the message about being unable to reach the Livegrid servers. Interestingly if I reboot with wi-fi disabled the message does not appear so there must be a check for an active internet connection. It must be down to the delays involved in establishing a connection or something similar and it does not happen every time. I can't reproduce the message at will. I am not particularly concerned for myself but he confidence of friends who phone me to ask what should they do about this message! At the moment I tell them to ignore it as it will go away automatically and it always does. I had never seen the message myself before as I am usually ethernet connected. I only started seeing it when circumstances forced me into using a wireless connection.

I agree having Liveguard is a positive step but not if it "cries wolf" by flagging up an error just because the internet connection is not yet up and running. I have followed the advice of peteyt and submitted a support ticket request on the subject.

I don't have a problem with the "failed to update" message. That is fairly infrequent. The main one is the failure to reach ESET's live grid servers. I have several people locally that I help with computers as part of a village project to spread computing use. Many of these have bought an ESET product based on my telling them what I use. The LIVE Server message is the one I get most calls about from worried users. It wouldn't be so bad if once the connection was made a notification appeared cancelling the warning. Instead it just remains in the notification area. I know that the desktop icon changes to green but that doesn't tend to reassure people who have seen the warning. I am talking about some vulnerable people here who are nervous enough about going online as it is. I don't mind what it is as there are various ways to tackle it. Some form of positive notification that you are now fully protected to cancel the negative one is needed.

I would like to submit the addition of a change in this respect as a feature request but am not sure how to do it. I realise that the anti virus protection is needed immediately on start up but unnecessary premature warnings are a nuisance and frighten users that they have a problem. Just a message "waiting for internet connection" is more than adequate? Similarly, I am in hospital using a public wi-fi network. I would love to be able to turn of the unsecure Wi-Fi network message that pops up every time I open a browser. Surely if I have ESET securing all browsers I have an element of protection anyway?

I find that eSet is always to quick to report an error that is due to the fact that it is active before the internet connection has been established. I get fed up with getting messages about not being able to reach live servers or failed to update product when I know that if I wait a few seconds for the wi-fi to sort itself out the message will usually go away. This false error message makes users feel insecure and there is a "cry wolf" aspect that if there is a real error, it might be ignored. The ability to set a delay on the error reporting message system to check for live internet before flashing up warnings would be helpful. Even something as simple such as "waiting for live internet connection before checking" would be better than sending unhelpful error messages. Does anybody agree with me?

The current setting was "recommended updates". I changed it to "important updates" and the list still showed 25 updates. I have changed it again to "critical" and the list has gone away completely with no longer a message warning on the system tray icon. It begs the question as to why Eset is seeing "important updates" required when running the systems check the shows zero and in any event I have Windows Update set to automatically check and install updates. I should add that as well as running the new version of Eset (11.0.144.0) I am also running Windows 10 64bit Fall Creators update version 1709.

I am running Internet security 11.0.144.0. I keep getting told by ESET that my system requires updates - some 25 in all. I run Windows Update and it tell me that my system is up to date. Most of these updates show as recommended and relate to Intel Chipset updates. I run the Intel Driver and Support assistant. It finds nothing that needs updating. What is ESET seeing that nothing else seems to? Am I missing something somewhere?

Many thanks for all the feedback. I don't pretend to understand all the technicalities other than to realise that most users will not delve in any detail into all the complexities of the subject. I started off this thread wanting some assurance that I was doing the right thing in sticking with ESET and not considering the "free" option and I am comfortable that I have achieved that. I fully recognise that no solution can ever give a 100% guarantee and the user must always take some responsibility as to what they do on their computers. It is, however, important that products that are considerably customizable, such as the various flavours of ESET, default to a high degree of security as many users will never venture beyond the default settings, let alone understand some of the configuration options offered.

Thanks for the comments and advice. However, I expect any AV product that I choose to pay for to provide the best possible protection by default rather than expecting the user to have knowledge and understanding of how to create advance settings. If Microsoft is deeming some form of access control as important and Eset is not then I need to ask why? I have no wish to start using Defender and am happy to pay for Eset to help keep my family computers safe but I am looking for reassurance that it will do so by default without me or my wife having any specialist knowledge. I don't mind being asked questions when first installing or updating on an interactive basis but I don't expect to have to be proactive in order to feel secure.

With the Fall Creators Update 1709 Microsoft has included an enhanced version of their own Windows Defender product. This apparently has an option to turn on anti-ransomware protection using a feature called "controlled folder access". See this link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/threat-protection/windows-defender-exploit-guard/enable-controlled-folders-exploit-guard Is this a "must have" feature or does Eset Smart Security have its own mechanism to give this degree of enhanced protection?

I have been testing the beta of Smart Security 9 for some weeks now. Interesting that this popup has just appeared now. At least it reminded me about this forum which I had forgotten. One bug that I have reported (and has been acknowledged) relates to the Banking Protection feature. Using IE11 you cannot select from a dropdown choice menu item which stops me from logging in to my bank or selecting a date range for a report in Paypal. This seems to be specific to Internet Explorer 11 as the feature works OK with Chrome or Firefox. I haven't tried a Windows 10 installation and the "Edge" browser but would be interested to hear if others have the same issue. (I don't intend installing Windows 10 as I have a TV tuner and use Windows Media Centre regularly). ESet Smart Security 9.0.117.0 Win 8.1 64 bit UK.