Geoff @ UVM

I’ve spent most of the day trying identify a systematic way to work around the campus antivirus solution, which is causing widespread system hangs. Our vendor has tentatively identified a problematic recent update, and is recommending that affected users temporarily disable the Eset Service service until a patch is available.

Disabling ESET NOD32 / ekrn Service.

If your system become unresponsive, in most cases soon after logging into the system, you may be affected. Please follow these instructions to disable the ESET service:

1. Restart your system in safe mode

• Windows Vista
• Windows XP

2. In either the Run command ( Start->Run or [Windows Key]+R)

OR in the Vista Start menu search box…

3. …Enter the command below

cmd /k "sc config ekrn start= disabled"

(Please note that the space after start= is required; goodness knows why…)

4. Watch for the success message:

Reboot and stay tuned to your friendly neighborhood technical support resources for updates.

PS. for what it’s worth, here’s my current ESET version info, which hangs my system.