OS completely unresponsive after installing Kaspersky for Windows Server 11 and rebooting

[K1029]

Hi

 

After installing Kaspersky for Windows Server 11 on a physical Hyper-V Host running Windows Server 2016, the server has become completely unresponsive after reboot.

 

The server will get to the Windows login screen (Where you have to press CTRL+ALT+DEL) but mouse and keyboard inputs are not detected. Also, the network card is shown as disconnected (though it is not) so I cannot RDP to the server. It is like no drivers are being loaded at all.

 

iLO or other remote tool inputs are also not detected.

 

Going into Safe Mode yields the same result - no input detected.

 

Is there anything I can do to get onto the server and uninstall Kaspersky? Something like a bootable OS environment that has access to Kaspersky?

[SIDDHARTHA]

SAME ISSUE FACED IN MANY SERVER NEED HELP URGENTLY

 

[MilanBortel]

Hi @K1029,

are you using full disk encryption (BitLocker) on that server? If not, you can always boot the host from removable drive (e.g. WIN10 or Linux) and get access to original C:\ drive. And I’m thinking about changing registry entries, so Kaspersky won’t automatically run on computer start..

This is the location of services in Windows registry:

Windows registry → KAVFS

Here you can find the Start settings:

KAVFS → Start

As you can see, the default value is 2 (to start Automatically), but you want to change it to Manual):
 

Start options

Let us know if it helped 🤓

Cheers,
Milan

[K1029]

Hi SIDDHARTA and MilanBortel.

 

I have resolved this by restoring a backup but here are 2 things I noticed:

 

1. It's not the installation of Kaspersky version 11 that breaks the server, but the deinstallation of the previous version
2. It corrupts or breaks a TON of drivers. I managed to get into Device Manager and saw that none of the drivers were recognized anymore.

 

I was not able to resolve this and instead opted for restoring a backup.