ESET’s smart security or antivirus program will automatically scan programs and memory on startup. This is set by default and in most cases is an essential part of protecting your computer. But it may come at a price as your system startup may get stuck due to this scanning process. There are many reasons for this to happen, such as you may have conflicting programs set to run at startup or have a limited amount of memory.

You cannot cancel the startup scan once it has started in the background, but there is a workaround to stop the startup scan from running in the first place by disabling the scan. Here are the steps you need to follow to stop the scanning process:

• Open the main program window from the programs menu by clicking Start -> All Programs -> ESET -> ESET Smart Security or ESET NOD32 Antivirus
• Another option is to open the main program using the ESET tray icon
• If the display mode is set to standard mode, change it to advanced mode by clicking the Change… link at the bottom left of the interface.
• Once you are in advanced mode, click on Tools on the left side panel.
• In the dropdown list, click Developer. Here you will see a list of scheduled programs and their frequency of execution. Deselect Automatic startup file check and finally close the window.

Now the startup scan has been disabled and will not run the next time you start your computer. Disable the scan only if there is a noticeable drop in your computer’s performance.