DIVERSE

By the way, returning to the original topic — How to 'disable' KIS while trialling alternative AV software? — with more experience I can now confirm that the advice from Berny to uninstall was appropriate. One of the reasons for that is that alternative AV software may scan the OS to find any already installed AV software (regardless of whether it's active/inactive, running or not, scheduled or not, etc.), and then, if found, the alternative AV software may refuse to proceed with the installation unless & until the pre-existing AV software is no longer reported by the OS as being "installed".

OK, so there are two problems implicit in what you're saying: "If KSC has been deleted in your OS" Well, has it? I don't know. I followed the recommended process to uninstall KIS. And then I found that “Kaspersky Secure Connection” was still present on my desktop. Then I attempted to uninstall KSC ...and I thought it was successful, but maybe something did actually remain. (I.e. maybe it wasn't fully uninstalled.) "It will not be able to make any impact on the system" It cannot create any new impacts after it has been uninstalled. However, it is easy for me to envisage situations where uninstalling a product could cause problems. That is, problems created at the moment of uninstallation, and then persisting. For example, the uninstaller deletes the executable, but neglects to remove a scheduled task that calls the executable, or neglects to remove a file association invoked when double-clicking or right-clicking certain files. Or the uninstaller deletes/reverts a DLL that has a cascading effect on some other application. It's also quite common when uninstalling an application for user data & preferences to be (optionally) retained, although I agree that this alone wouldn't generally create an adverse impact. Given that I couldn't identify a clear cause of the problem, I was seeking input on whether any other users had experienced something similar. —DIVERSE P.S. What is "KL"??? Had to look it up: "Kaspersky Lab" ?

… I also suddenly had a couple of weird problems* that cropped up, including a problem on startup/logon. The Group Policy Client service failed the sign-in. The universal unique identifier (UUID) type is not supported. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/user-profiles-and-logon/first-logon-fails-deploy-image which resulted in about a thirty minute (yes, really) delay in reaching the login screen & logging in. [There was also a twenty minute delay in shutting down on the immediately preceding session, although I didn’t see an error message.] It’s just speculation because of the temporal coincidence, but it could be related to Kaspersky Secure Connection, because the above issue has occasionally been linked to VPN settings. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/the-universal-unique-identifier-uuid-type-is-not/35fbe1f2-5318-40e8-906a-71df9b2fd3f8#LastReply The only system changes I made recently (i.e. in the session just before the fault appeared) were uninstalling a couple of unused applications, namely ”Kaspersky Secure Connection” and Foxit PDF Editor, deleting a portable ‘installation’ of VirtualDub, and removing a defunct shortcut to a long-ago-uninstalled Norton Studio. Based on that, it seems possible that it could have been somehow related to uninstalling ”Kaspersky Secure Connection”. —DIVERSE * The other (minor) faults that have cropped up are failure to install a SeaMonkey update on the first attempt just now (worked on the second attempt); Windows Update keeps switching itself to “Never check for updates (not recommended” in the last few days (maybe related to KIS uninstallation and/or BD installation?), despite the fact that I’ve repeatedly set it to “Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them”.

Hi, Berny. Thanks for the extra advice. I think it might be a bit late for me to do that now, as I have already uninstalled ”Kaspersky Secure Connection”. ...

Thanks for letting me/us know of another thing to check. I haven’t yet uninstalled “Kaspersky Secure Connection”, but when I checked Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections * just now there was no Kaspersky item listed. —DIVERSE * At least in Windows 8.1 it’s fiddly to get to this: I navigate through Control Panel to “Network and Sharing Center”, and then “Change adapter settings”.

So, to follow up…. KIS seemed to be successfully uninstalled, and I was able to install a trial version of alternative AV software. (Interestingly, the alternative AV software refused to install itself until it recognised that KIS had been uninstalled.) Later I was surprised to discover that “Kaspersky Secure Connection” was still present on my desktop. I don’t think I had ever used it (it is a VPN, right?), and I had assumed it was part of KIS. Anyway, however it might have been installed, it seems that it comes with a completely separate uninstaller. I suppose that this is a run-on-demand tool only, so it presumably doesn’t interfere with other AV products. BTW, I guess it hadn’t been updating itself either, as it seems to be stuck on the version that was (presumably) originally installed back in 2018. So I plan to uninstall this too, for completeness, and because I never use it, and because it’s out of date anyway. —DIVERSE P.S. Actually, I first started using Kaspersky products circa 2013, although when the old Kaspersky forums were deleted and replaced by this new ‘community discussion’, all of my old posts were wiped.

OK, after the third time it might be almost finished.

Thanks. I have followed your instructions, and it seemed to be going OK. When I was instructed to save my licence information to MyKaspersky it caused the KIS application to start up again (after I’d exited) in order to log in; eventually I thought this might be holding up the uninstallation process, so I quit KIS again. But it got stuck on the above dialogue box for about 15 minutes. (In the meanwhile I updated & re-enabled Windows Defender, and initiated a Quick Scan.) Then, without me clicking anything on the above dialogue box (just after I took the screenshot), it somehow went all the way back to seemingly uninstall from scratch again, as below. And that ran to a full progress-bar, but with still just the Cancel button only (as above), and yet again after a few minutes it started all over again. It’s still in progress, still repeating the cycle. Not sure what’s happening. —DIVERSE

Hello, all. For reasons that might be obvious to those following the news, I am considering moving off Kaspersky’s products — at least in the interim. Some competitors offer trial downloads (e.g. for one month), and indeed even Windows comes with some AV features. But I am aware that it is generally strongly recommended not to allow two AV applications to run simultaneously, and this advice is sometimes simplified to recommend that two AV products should not even be installed at the same time. I am currently running KIS 21.3 on Windows 8.1 x64. The current licence expires around the end of 2022. So my question is this: what should I do with KIS while the alternative AV software is being run? Would it be recommended to... “Completely” remove all traces of Kaspersky? Deactivate the licence? Set KIS’s status as “Disabled” in Windows Task Manager’s “Startup” tab? Just click on “Pause protection ...” in the KIS menu? [Does this setting persist after system reboot???] Other???Thanks, DIVERSE

Hello, thank-you for your keen interest. The two videos are what I have also obtained. They provide a shortcut that takes the user indirectly to the Protected Browser ...via the KIS GUI. It is interesting that the default spam word list is a mixture of mostly German terms with some English terms mixed in. A bit weird. —DIV P.S. I realised that I neglected to say it clearly above, but for the record even after I noticed the Safe Money icon on my desktop today, I still did continue with your recommended procedure of restoring the default KIS settings & shutting down, and creating a ‘new’ shortcut (which was exactly the same as the old shortcut). Then I imported my original settings back in again.

Side note: I had a look at the settings exported by KIS. It’s about a 2.5 MB file. One peculiar thing I noticed was the list of “obsceneWords”. In my file, the listed words are mostly German (e.g. "* kostenlos *"), besides a scattering of English words that would likely be borrowed from time to time by German-speakers (e.g. "* hardcore *" ). My system settings are mostly English. Occasionally I might use a different language for installing a particular application, and it’s possible (although unlikely) that I might have installed KIS using a German-language installer. But even if so, surely KIS should be configured to recognise obscene terms in more languages than just the one used for installation? This seems to be connected to spam email protection. —DIV

OK, I have returned to this topic. First off, I should describe one further way of launching a Protected Browser: After launching KIS and navigating to the “Safe Money” tool, click on any one of the added websites on the list (even if it is set to “Do not run in Protected Browser”!!). Note: if no websites have yet been added to the list, then simply click “Add website”. There are a few ways of launching KIS and navigating to the “Safe Money” tool: Click the system-tray icon, run from Windows’s Start menu, et cetera, and then ‘manually’ click on “Safe Money”. Click the “Safe Money” icon on the Desktop (discussed further below). Note that “Tool” is arguably an excessively grandiose name for what is actually just an interface for adding and removing websites from a list, and being able to click listed websites to launch the Protected Browser Now, I couldn’t really remember it, but I do have a “Safe Money” icon on the Desktop. Ironically I had already gone partway through the above instructions to export & restore KIS settings before I noticed it. It’s a shortcut with the following properties: Date created: ‎Friday, ‎22 ‎January ‎2021, ‏‎21:57:16 Target: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Kaspersky Lab\Kaspersky Internet Security 21.2\avpui.exe" -safebanking Now, some may say, “If you already have that, what are you complaining about?” The problem is this: I was thinking that the “Protected Browser” was known as “Safe Money”. So you can see that my previous post was wrong. It should have said, “In the meanwhile I note that now I am aware of a few ways of launching the Protected Browser:”. I’m not sure how that confusion developed. Maybe the old context-menu entry was called “Safe Money” but actually launched the Protected Browser? So I want really wanted was a shortcut to directly open the Protected Browser. Then I will type in whatever website URL (or search term) that I want. So I thought that is what the relevant desktop shortcut should be performing. As my desktop shortcut didn’t do this, I thought that the relevant desktop shortcut hadn’t been created. The “Safe Money” icon on the desktop is pretty useless, saving me maybe one mouse click, and not saving any time — all it does is open the KIS interface at the “Safe Money” tool instead of the usual opening screen (where the “Safe Money” tool are one click away). On my system, opening the KIS interface is a slow process, and (should be) completely unnecessary if my purpose is simply to run the protected browser, rather than to choose a listed website or reconfigure the listed websites in the “Safe Money” tool. The old method of going to the Protected Browser from the KIS context menu was good, because I didn’t have to minimise applications to view the desktop, and didn’t need to launch the KIS interface (which is a slow process for me). Any ideas on how to make a desktop shortcut to directly open the Protected Browser? Currently I can see that I can get to the Protected Browser (opening specific sites) from the context menu for the taskbar icon for KIS if I have it either running or pinned, but (as I mentioned) I am trying to avoid launching the KIS GUI, and don’t want to pin it to my taskbar. —DIV

Thanks, Flood &c. I'll have a go at the detailed steps you listed for creating a Desktop shortcut for Safe Money. In the meanwhile I note that now I am aware of a few ways of launching Safe Money: context menu of KIS icon in System Tray (in older versions of KIS only); type an ‘obviously sensitive’ website URL (e.g. for a bank) into the address bar of browser; context menu of KIS icon pinned to Taskbar (KIS GUI need not be opened); context menu of KIS icon on Taskbar (KIS GUI is open); shortcut on Desktop (not working for me, yet).

Thanks, Flood &c. Did Kaspersky explain why they didn’t port anything over to the new forum; or, if not, maybe retain the old forum in a separate read-only archive?

Thanks, nexon. That’s what I realised. I can understand it’s problematic to allow users to delete posts that have received replies — or perhaps even for posts that have no replies, but have been read by many and linked to from elsewhere. But it seems OK (in my opinion) to allow users to delete their own posts if there have been no replies — and perhaps within a ‘short’ timeframe (5 min, or 1 h, or 24 h, say).

In previous versions of KIS there was an item in the context menu from the icon in the system tray to allow launching Safe Money manually. Now, with version 21.2.16.590(b), there seem to be only about half of the number of items on that context menu from the icon in the system tray (now only a total of 6), which doesn’t include the item to launch Safe Money manually. There was also apparently a feature to add a shortcut to the desktop. https://support.kaspersky.com/KIS/2019/en-US/68178.htm LinkI have tried following those steps, and there is indeed a ‘link’ in the Safe Money section of the Settings that claims it will add a Safe Money shortcut to the Desktop. “Create shortcut for Safe Money” I have clicked it thrice, and it claimed each time that the shortcut had been successfully created…. “Desktop shortcut created“ Yet there is still no shortcut for Safe Money on the Desktop!

I used to have an account (also named “DIVERSE”) on the Kaspersky forums. See http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=%2bKaspersky+DIVERSE&d=4615470789690748&mkt=en-AU&setlang=en-GB&w=8KzoCnq3UaAy361cFyRLfozNukw-CVLW The account and all of the associated posts were removed. Why?

Why can’t my post be deleted by me?