How to 'disable' KIS while trialling alternative AV software?

[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

[Berny]

@DIVERSE

Please see this Kaspersky Support article https://support.kaspersky.com/common/uninstall/12783 , please take care to save your license information during the uninstall procedure.

[DIVERSE]

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

[DIVERSE]

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

 

[DIVERSE]

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.  

[Flood and Flood's wife]

Hello @DIVERSE, 

Thank you for posting back!

1. Also check Windows Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Network Connections → make sure the Kaspersky Security Data Escort Adapter (Kaspersky’s virtual network adapter for the VPN), is deleted.
2. Sadly, when the original Forum was shutdown, everything was obliterated, nothing was archived. 

Thank you🙏, 

Flood🐳+🐋

[DIVERSE]

1. Also check Windows Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Network Connections → make sure the Kaspersky Security Data Escort Adapter (Kaspersky’s virtual network adapter for the VPN), is deleted.

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”.  

[Berny]

@DIVERSE

Please check your Network Properties in your Kaspersky Firewall settings after system startup.
The “Kaspersky Security Data Escort Adapter” will come up when you launch Kaspersky VPN.
After uninstalling  Kaspersky VPN  + power off/on PC  the network adapter will not show up any more.

[DIVERSE]

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”.

...

[DIVERSE]

…

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”.  

[Wesly.Zhang]

Hello @DIVERSE

If KSC has been deleted in your OS. It will not be able to make any impact on the system, including other VPN products. So what's the question now? I don't see where the problem is, if you have any problems related to KL product please let me know. Thanks.

Regards.

[DIVERSE]

On 3/29/2022 at 2:48 PM, Wesly.Zhang said:

Hello @DIVERSE

If KSC has been deleted in your OS. It will not be able to make any impact on the system, including other VPN products. So what's the question now? I don't see where the problem is, if you have any problems related to KL product please let me know. Thanks.

Regards.

OK, so there are two problems implicit in what you're saying:  

1. "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.)  
2. "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"  ?

Edited July 7, 2022 by DIVERSE

[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".  

Edited July 7, 2022 by DIVERSE