I use Process Explorer as my task manager, and have for years, so every time I open it to close background apps that don't like to fully close, ESO PTS is closing, too.
With behaviour like that, we could be excused for thinking that ESO is behaving like the malware.
Amusingly enough, that is one of the tools that I used to use back in the day when I was chasing down malware and spyware in programs on Windows. (Edit: Blocking that tool was usually a good indicator that there was malware or spyware active)
Same with "Process Hacker". When you're using it as a task manager replacement ESO-PTS crashes right after the login screen. When I start it while ESO is running, ESO crashes after ~1min. It doesn't even show an error message, so I would not have known the cause if not for this thread.
I replaced the old "Process Hacker" with its successor "System Informer" and it seems to work for now. Until They put it on a black list too.
It's probably enough to change the hash and/or the name of procexp64.exe to make it work again. But we shouldn't be forced to do stuff like this.
Then again this could just be PTS related and the live client won't have that problem.
Well, Process Explorer is an advanced system utility that can be downloaded from Microsoft. I've been using it since long before ESO was a glimmer in anyone's eye and has been part of my standard PC build for as long. It is on my system tools USB stick that I used when fixing my parent's computer.
There is little debate over whether I would choose Microsoft system utilities I've been using for decades over ESO plus whatever Anti-cheat Spyware they added. I have no interest in tricking ESO to let me run it. ESO is not the purpose of the computer, so other things are installed and running that have nothing to do with ESO.
My main question is whether I can get my money back for Gold Road, if this goes Live.
@ZOS_Kevin ... your team decided to go forward with the process table scanning and shutting down the client for Process Explorer, task manager tool available for free download from Microsoft.
As this is a system management tool that I use across all of my Windows PC, and I generally don't allow game studios to dictate how I manage my computers, I will have to stop playing on the PC platform. I don't want the game just crashing if it detects something it doesn't like, and I don't want to be accused down the calendar of a ToS violation related to "third party apps".
I will see if I can get a refund of Gold Road.
Edit: This update also appears to be interfering with the Corsair iCUE software, somehow, so it is not setting my cooling and RGB profiles properly.
Edit 2: The interference with iCUE appears to just be the game client hanging and sucking the life out of the rest of the computer.