Updating ESET left me in BSOD cycle

[nickster_uk 1]

First off, really not happy at spending the last few hours of my life battling a BSOD situation by trying to update EIS to the latest version using the official method.

I've clicked 'not now' to update for a few weeks now as everything was running just fine with the version of EIS that I had installed, but tonight I thought, 'why not?  The lovely people at ESET have no doubt put a lot of time and energy into their latest version, so what's the worst that can happen?'.

A wise question in hindsight, and one, judging by other forum posts in recent history, has been asked by others in the forum.

I clicked on the option to update and everything seemed to go without a fuss, then I was prompted to reboot to complete the procedure.

No probs.

So, I rebooted and swiftly got a 0x7B INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE BSOD.  Lovely stuff.  It must be one of those erroneous BSODs where a perfectly functioning system has a brainfart, so I reboot again and same thing happened again...and again.  Marvellous.

I tried Safe Mode and still got the 0x7B error.  Praise be.

I run a dual boot system, so then decided to boot into XP (I know, but I only use it for diagnostics and stuff).  I then tried loading the system registry hive from the Windows 7 installation and manually cleaned out any leftover service entries and driver files, which there seemed to be a few.  And yes I backed up any I deleted.  Downloaded the ESET uninstaller tool just in case too.

Reboot again, still no joy.

As I didn't have any recent back images which I could restore from (rookie error), the only option left was last known good config which thankfully worked.  I then had to spent a considerable time reinstalling drivers and getting programs to work again, but at least I could get pornhub, I mean my desktop up again!  Boom.  Drops mic.

Come on ESET...what was that all about?

A cursory Google search finds quite a few other users who had the same issue when trying to update their ESET products.

I'm sure there's a lesson in here about taking regular backups, but still....it's still a bit lame ESET.

Thanks

Edited August 17, 2018 by nickster_uk

[Marcos 5,074]

We haven't been reported any issue like this since last year when we got one case where we suspected a 3rd party driver to be the culprit. If possible, please configure Windows to generate complete memory dumps and provide one from a crash so that we can determine the root cause of the crash.

In the mean time, try renaming "C:\Program Files\ESET\ESET Security\Drivers" to "C:\Program Files\ESET\ESET Security\Drivers_noload" and C:\Windows\System32\drivers\ehdrv.sys e.g. to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\ehdrv.bak in safe mode. Also make sure that the driver C:\Windows\System32\drivers\edevmon.sys exists on the disk.

[itman 1,659]

Interesting.

I had something very similar happen to me a few years back the very first time I tried to install Eset on Win 7. I believe it was Eset Smart Security ver. 8 at the time. I also was running a dual boot Win XP and Win 7 configuration at the time. So this combo for some reason in very limited install instances might be the problem. Also in my case Win XP and 7 were installed on different HDDs.

The BSOD stuck in a loop business didn't manifest till the first cold boot the day or two after Eset was installed. Never could figure out what caused it. I just restored Win 7 from an drive image backup prior to the Eset installation. Then with trepidation reinstalled Eset. This issue never occurred again and I am now on Win 10 1803 and the latest ver. of Eset Internet Security.