Smart Security 8 Trashed My PC!

[itman 1,659]

The first question is if this software is dual boot compatible? I run a dual boot WIN XP SP3 and WIN 7 x64 SP1 setup. SS 8 is installed on WIN 7.N 7

 

I installed SS 8 on 3/16. All went well w/install except WIN 7 firewall wasn't reset properly. That appeared to straighten itself yesterday at first cold boot of the day. Also yesterday, set a couple of detail logging options on in the software plus ran a Smart scan. It found a couple of PUA's and cleaned one of them.

 

When I shut down the WIN 7 for the night yesterday, the PC didn't shut down but rebooted instead. When the WIN 7 logon screen appeared, I shutdown the PC from there. All this a bit odd.

 

This morning, I startup up PC. Select WIN 7 OS to load as normal although a strange loading OS files message appeared prior to display of the boot loader screen. Selected WIN 7 OS from boot loader screen. Immediately went into WIN 7 recovery mode. This indicates my boot files somehow got damaged or infected.

WIN 7 recovered OK but it appears it did so using a system restore recovery point prior to SS 8 install.

 

Of course, SS 8 install is trashed since no traces of it exist in the registry although all its files since exist on my HDD. I am not worried about clean up since I took an HDD image back up prior to SS 8 install and will restore from that. 

 

I will not attempt to install SS 8 again unless I get assurance from Eset this won't happen again. I have run different AVs and ISs on this PC w/o issue except for PrivateFirewall which also did the same thing as this incident once but straightened itself out after that. That software BTW also has a HIPS feature.

 

 

[Marcos 5,070]

I assume you installed Win XP and Windows 7 on separate partitions, didn't you? In such case, installing ESET should be ok, however, you must install it to 2 separate folders for each of the operating systems (I assume that each one uses a separate "Program files" folders too).

We haven't had any reports of issues like this from other users.

[itman 1,659]

WIN 7 installed on one HDD, WIN XP on another HDD. Eset SS 8 was only installed on WIN 7.

 

WIN XP on first HDD and WIN 7 on second HDD as far as BIOS boot ordering goes. Again something like this happened once previously when I had PrivateFirewall installed a few years back and that software had a HIPS; just like SS 8 does.

 

Security software that was installed prior to the SS 8 install was Emsisoft Anti-Malware paid which I uninstalled using WIN 7 program uninstaller prior to SS 8 installation. I then ran It's clean utility. Then installed SS 8.

 

Referring back to the PF incident, that trashing occurred right after the first cold boot after the PF installation. So yes, the SS 8 incident is a bit strange since it occurred 2 days after installation. It is possible I got nailed with malware while using SS 8? I did run a scan with EAM after the incident and PC was clean. I have since restored WIN 7 using my image backup.

Edited March 18, 2015 by itman