JeremyNicoll

> Definitely a bit on the paranoid side ... It didn't start off being a website login security thing, but instead a reaction to having previously had only one email address, which wasn't at a personal domain. That started in the mid 1990s when spam was unheard of. When I finally got my own domain and started migrating email use away from the first single-address solution, I was by then getting thousands of spams per day. And I realised that the effort in changing email address for all my contacts was huge. So I started handing out individual addresses for dealings with individuals (ie friends) but still used shared addresses for some other things. As time has gone on and email addresses have got compromised, I've tended to replace shared-use ones with single use ones. Now if one address attracts spam I only have to change it and notify one person/place with the new address. > Would still be possible to compromise the accounts if someone were to gain access to your system though. We all have that problem.

My only idea is that Trusteer maybe hasn't fully uninstalled. Did you use Trusteer's special uninstall utility?

Oops, sorry. Yes.

> I think it just uses a Gravatar API to check and see if a user with the same e-mail address exists. I suppose that would work for people who use the same email address everywhere. I use different addresses for every site I log in to (so, yes, that's hundreds of different addresses, but also no risk that if one address/password combination gets compromised that the combination is of any use anywhere else).

I don't know precisely what a 'selective startup' is, but if it means that various background services were not started, that would make sense.

Which version of Windows do you have?

Gravatar is a well-known central source for avatar images. I think I first started using it for my Sourceforge account. In this forum here, my choice was to use a Gravatar-supplied image... but to do so I had to configure the forum software with the correct login for the Gravatar site (which is not the same as my login for this forum). Surely for 'My Emsisoft', there must be a similar choice?

> Jeremy, I take your point, but your suggestion assumes that these decisions are taken in a vacuum- they are not. In my case, I had a Steam "debug.log" that contained a spammed (repeated > several hundreds times with date stamps one second or less apart) error message That's not 'spam', that's a program that tried something several hundred times per second logging each failure. It also suggests a lack of commonsense on the part of the Steam programmers to let the thing keep trying something that was failing. > that said "unable to load Steam\bin\chrome.pak." The location (in the Steam folder) and content of this message, together with the complete lack of any other error message, would lead > any rational person to conclude that this is a Steam Client issue. All I'm trying to say is that a hypothetical rational person needs to look for causes rather than effects. And if reinstalling Steam (or anyting else that suddenly breaks) is disruptive, do some checking online first. > In case you don't play Steam games, I will tell you that users have no control over when (and with what content) the Steam Client updates itself ... I don't play Steam stuff, but I think GT500 does and he says different... > So basically, what your post suggests is that I stop trusting EAM and begin blocking and managing EAM updates... No it doesn't say that; I wrote about taking care of which WU updates get installed, and when. You won't find any anti-virus or anti-malware application that has multiple updates during the day that doesn't occasionally break something. And, although it's clear you're angry, talking about "...a "Steam problem" that turns out to have been an unannounced EAM bug" is just silly - of course it was "unnanounced". If Emsisoft had known of a bug as serious as that one they wouldn't have released code containing it. Big software companies make mistakes too - look at MS with all of its resources, having had to withdraw the latest W10 update because some users are seeing files being deleted... You don't suppose they deliberately did that, do you? What you might do, if you don't want to take such a risk with EAM, is change to using the "delayed feed", where instead of using current & changing versions of EAM you choose to use an older version which is thought by Emsisoft to be more stable. You can select that at Settings -> Updates -> Update feed, and choose "Delayed".

I don't disagree that it might be useful if Emsisoft did use their notification mechanism more creatively... but there's a general principle in diagnosing faults on a computer, which is: what changed? If (in this case) Steam suddenly stops working, think about what may have just changed on your machine. Have any Windows Updates been installed? [I know that's hard to control on W10 but on earlier versions it's easier - and I've never had a XP/W7/W8 system that's been allowed to install updates automatically - it does it when I tell it to and thus I know when it happened. With XP etc I also read the descriptions of every update before I installed it, so I knew which bits of the system were being changed. Unfortunately (for W8.1 anyway) MS no longer publish a useful description of what's in each update. I also, generally don't let updates install on the day they are released. When MS screw-up an update they often take a day or two to realise and it's simpler not to be one of the people affected by that.] Have any system-wide anti-virus or anti-malware applications just changed? (etc). When I reported here that I suddenly had a problem with Firefox clearing cookies, I'm sure nobody thought it could be an EAM problem, but EAM had just changed at exactly that point whereas FF had not. And... it /was/ an EAM problem. Don't be in a hurry to uninstall anything, or reformat or reinstall Windows. I have NEVER reformatted a system or reinstalled Windows - I've never had a problem that needed that. Do a bit of research - if your problem really had been in Steam itself then you wouldn't have been alone - Steam forums would be full of people with similar issues. The forums here weren't full of reported Steam problems, but they did see a surge in problems in general.

I don't suppose you know what the versions referrred to in your earlier posts were. If you did know that, it might make it easier for anyone reading the whole thread (and indeed you) to see what might have changed through its life. For now, since no-one else (probably) has the same mix of Noscript, AdBlock Plus and this Adguard Pro thing (and even if they have the same versions of those they might not have them configured the same way as you), you probably want just to look at what happens with browsers without extra addons/extensions. GT500 will no doubt comment on whether or not there's known problems with Noscript, AdBlock Plus, Adguard Pro ... but bear in mind that with the recent changes to how Surf Protection is having to work, it's going to be even more difficult to understand how these things might interact. From the EAM point of view, it's possibly worth defining Adguard Pro as an exclusion. But the more fundamental point is that (from a quick peek at https://adguard.com/en/blog/in-depth-review-adguard-for-windows/ ) that it seems to be a system-wide Ad-blocking program. However it works, I'd not be at all surprised if it intercepts DNS (or something) in broadly the same way as the most recent version of EAM... and if it does, it's not a surprise if they conflict with each other.

The most-recent 'stable' version of EAM now contains the very-recently-released fix. It's ambiguous to talk about "the stable" version and "the delayed version", because what they are changes. It's better if you explicitly look - at the 'About' link (at the bottom righthand corner of EAM's main Overview screen) - and tell us the version number you actually have in each instance.

It's no secret. The update that fixed it contained in its description: "Fixed: issue with Steam and other apps that use DirectX". See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX

> Ok I ran FRST now what please ? /Attach/ the scan log files to a reply here. Staff will be able to read them, ordinary users like me will not.

What do you mean by "prevents ... a2service.exe from loading on startup"? Or maybe, what do you mean by "loading"? After reboot with the GUI thing switched off, a2service WAS running. If "You have to set the Emsisoft Protection Service to manual in order to prevent it from running on startup" really is the case, what exactly is the use-case, for an ordinary user, of changing the "Startup" switch in the GUI?

Yes! It's fixed it.