David Lambert

Like I said before, I can live without the touchpad drivers.

I do not use B&PP.

To clarify, the problem is the invasive implementation of Secure All Browsers? I already did the testing requested, so I'll report it anyway. I've reinstalled the Cirque touchpad software. The browser performance issues come back. Disabling Keyboard Protection and disabling Enhanced Memory Protection does not fix the browser performance issues. Disabling Secure All Browsers does fix the browser performance issues, even when Keyboard Protection and Enhanced Memory Protection are both enabled.

Should someone contact Cirque about this? They may or may not have put a keylogger into their touchpad driver, and if not, they may want to remove the contaminated driver from their website.

I only started using ESET on Aug. 1 of last year. I have never knowingly used the "B&PP feature."

I've searched the Windows registry on my computer for "Cirque", and I do not find any registry entries under Cirque mentioning keyloggers. I opened up the installer's INF files in a text editor, and I see entries for a wide variety of CIrque's devices, which include keyboards, but most of those entries don't make it into the Windows registry.

There is no mention of keylogging in the CIrque Control Panel Add-on. The EULA displayed when installed does not contain the word "key" anywhere in it. One of the things that the CIrque Control Panel Add-on does is let you assign one of a large number of actions to the left and right mouse buttons, some of which are a key-press or a sequence of key-presses on the keyboard: Left Click, Right Click, Middle Click, Click-Lock, Double-Click, Slow Mode, Horizontal Only, Vertical Only, Insert, Delete, Home, End, PageUp, PageDown, Enter, Tab, Next Tab, Previous Tab, Last Window Used, Help, Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, Save, Print, Close Application, Maximize Window, Minimize Window, Restore Window, Minimize All Windows, Restore All Windows, Start Menu, Run, Window Center, Windows Explorer, Default Web Browser, Default Email, Default Media, Create New Link... The default left and right mouse button actions are left-click and right-click. Is this list a red herring?

The driver is for Cirque's standalone touchpad. I'm going to install it and see what the Cirque Control Panel Add-on offers in that area, but I've used their hardware and drivers for at least 10 years, and I don't remember anything about keylogging.

Is it possible that the keylogging is due to malware inside the driver?

It does keylogging?!?!?! I didn't know that. Yikes.

Cirque touchpads can be found at https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313&_nkw=Cirque&_sacat=3676&LH_TitleDesc=0&_odkw=power+cat+touchpad&_osacat=3676

As Spock would say on Star Trek, "Fascinating." Going through this amount of trouble is not worth it for one case, since I'm fine, but the root issue may pop up enough to make it worth your while to pursue.

You can buy a used one on eBay, use it, then sell it again. You might even be able to sell it at a slight profit.

I must use the device, but I don't have to use Cirque's drivers. You make a convincing case for removing Cirque's drivers, so I have removed them. Thank you all for your help. You may close my trouble ticket.

I'm using a Cirque SmartCat. On https://www.cirque.com/drivers, they specify that driver version 3.8.0 is for Windows 10 (64 bit). But that doesn't mean it's tested and set up to be trusted. But elsewhere, in the quote you found, they state that "GlidePoint Driver is not guaranteed to perform as expected with all versions of Windows 10." They have stopped manufacturing the SmartCat and all their other standalone touchpads, so nothing is going change. You state that "it is questionable if the trackpad device should be used on Win 10." Are you saying that it is actually unsafe to use that dll, from a security standpoint? Could malware make its way into that dll? Or is it just recommended to not use untrusted software from a compatibility viewpoint. Like I said, I'd prefer to keep using their software, but it's not essential. I do need to use a standalone touchpad, since I sustained repetitive stress injuries decades ago, and I cannot use a regular mouse for extended periods of time. ESET Internet Security has performance exclusions and detection exclusions. I could reinstall the driver and try those out.

I know there's no way to get the computer to trust that dll. Is there anything I can do to change how ESET treats that dll that would help? The touchpad software has nice capabilities that would be nice to retain.

I uninstalled it, rebooted, and my browser issues are fixed! I'm shocked, because I have used that touchpad software for years, ever since I purchased this computer. These browser issues, which are less than a month old, also vanish when I uninstall ESET and Microsoft Defender takes over. Where do we go from here?

Yes, later today.

Here's another log. This time, I started up Google Chrome, right-clicked the Google Search page, selected "Save As", and saved that web page to disk. The Windows save as dialog took forever to appear, I wondered if it would ever appear. eis_logs.zip

OK, I followed your instructions. I started up Google Chrome, typed in a search phrase into Google Search, and did a search. The letters in the phrase appeared very slowly, but the search results appeared very quickly once the browser responded to my request to submit the search. eis_logs.zip

In my second attempt, I did less, but the zip file was 190 MB, which is bigger. On the second attempt, I turned on advanced logging, started Firefox, logged a note to this thread, and stopped the advance logging. On the first attempt, not only did I start Firefox and log a note to this thread, I also went to python.org and downloaded the pdf for the latest version of python, and the zip file was smaller than on the second attempt. Please advise.

First attempt did not go well, the zip file was 182 MB, but only 100 MB is allowed.

OK, now I understand. By the way, I'm using this as an opportunity to reproduce this issue, which is quite intermittent.

I'm confused by log collecting. There are what look like to entirely separate log collection facilities, one described at https://support.eset.com/en/kb3466-how-do-i-use-eset-log-collector, and the other in ESET Internet Security under Help and Support -> Technical Support. Am I supposed to run both at the same time? On top of that, ESET Log Collector has the one button "Collect". I can press that button, but then if I press "Cancel", the ESET Log Collector erases its log file. There's no manual way to stop log collecting as far as I can tell.

I've been having similar-sounding problems in the browsers I use (Firefox and Chrome) since late March. Originally thought my computer itself was going bad, until on a hunch I uninstalled ESET and found my browser problems all vanished. Reinstalled ESET and my browser problems returned. The problems I have all seem to center around how the browser interacts with the rest of my computer: Typing into browser text fields, including this one, intermittently lags by up to 5 seconds. Browser tabs often take several seconds to respond to attempts to close them. The entire browser takes awhile to respond to attempts to shut it down. After I request the download of a file, it can take 10 seconds or more before the Windows File Explorer "Save As" dialog appears. Would logs from the ESET Log Collector be useful, or are you good?