I am answering in Safe Mode. Other than telling me that an additional card is needed to run Screen Saver, shutting down word ("Microsoft Office cannot verify the license for this application. A repair attempt failed or was canceled by the user. The application will now shut down."), having no audio service and having a note to turn on Windows Security service, the rest seem to be working OK (although the spinning grey wheels are only a sporadic occurrence).

 The password manager problem is now fixed, although I still don't know what caused it -- I did nothing unusual.  My confusion was on whether or not the password would be removed from the system, and on how to complete the process suggested.
   What issues does ESET cause?  (I upgraded to Smart Security because I thought it would be better).  And if ESET is "barely hanging on", why do you continue to use NOD 32?
Thanks.

Reformatted for legibility…

I am answering in Safe Mode. Other than telling me that an additional card is needed to run Screen Saver, shutting down word ("Microsoft Office cannot verify the license for this application. A repair attempt failed or was canceled by the user. The application will now shut down."), having no audio service and having a note to turn on Windows Security service, the rest seem to be working OK (although the spinning grey wheels are only a sporadic occurrence).

The password manager problem is now fixed, although I still don't know what caused it -- I did nothing unusual. My confusion was on whether or not the password would be removed from the system, and on how to complete the process suggested.

What issues does ESET cause? (I upgraded to Smart Security because I thought it would be better). And if ESET is "barely hanging on", why do you continue to use NOD 32?

Thanks.

freedom23 said

And if ESET is "barely hanging on", why do you continue to use NOD 32?

Because I bought a 3 year license and it is still adequate. Just not the world beater it was on detection rates. Still up there but not in the top five anymore

So did Firefox stop causing issues when you ran in safe mode? We are not Firefox support, but I had hoped that this would see the Firefox issues clear up while in that mode.

As mentioned, Firefox (aside from the noted deficiencies) did work in safe mode. It is so far working in regular mode, although I don't know how the two relate to each other, as I won't be normally working in safe mode, and the problems are sporadic. Thanks.

Safe mode disables anti virus as well as some other software, mostly things that load at system startup and a silent failure from then can cause other programs and in the case of Firefox tabs to crash.

One of the reasons I run an anti virus and not a security suite is that a firewall should block ports and external addresses, not internal programs which all the suites do.