Windows Defender May Cause Elliott Start-Up Difficulties
(1) Elliott Configuration Screen Appears
When starting up Elliott, the Elliott configuration screen appears automatically. See sample screen below.
Normally, this configuration window only pops up automatically when you use Elliott for the first time and the system needs some basic information in order to run Elliott. We know that this clearly is not the case for our users who are reporting the Elliott start-up issue. The start-up screen problem may happen to both Elliott V7 and V8 users. Users typically can just click "OK" or "Cancel" to continue.
(2) Exceed User License Count
The second symptom occurs when users receive exceeding user license count messages like the following: "Licensed Number of Concurrent Users (...) Has Been Exceeded. Pls. Contact NETCELLENT Inc. Or Your Authorized Dealer To License Additional Users." See sample screen below:
Users may receive this message even though there are no other users in Elliott, or very few users in Elliott. This message applies to V7 only. If the same user uses Elliott V8 to start up, then he/she will not receive this message. When this message shows up for Elliott V7 users, those users can't proceed any further.
Stop Windows Defender
To determine whether Windows Defender is the cause of your Elliott start-up problem, please start up your Window Services and find out if you have "Windows Defender" installed. If you do and it is "started," then right click on "Windows Defender" and choose "Stop." Test Elliott to see if the start-up problem goes away.
If you have proven that "Windows Defender" is the cause of the Elliott start-up problem, then you should go to Windows Services, right click on "Windows Defender," and choose "Properties." Change the start-up type to "Disabled" so Windows Defender will not run in the future.
Since we can't duplicate this Elliott start-up problem in-house with Windows Defender, it is quite possible that you may be able to run Windows Defender without any issue. However, most of the support incidents we have identified so far with this Elliott start-up problem are related to Windows Defender. Disabling the Windows Defender fixes the problem. In many cases, these users are running on virtualized Windows 7 machines. However, we can't say the virtualized Windows 7 + Windows Defender combination will cause the Elliott start-up problem since we tested that scenario in-house without problems.
If your organization requires anti-virus software on each workstation, you can run other anti-virus software. As far as we are aware, we have not found any commercially available anti-virus software that is incompatible with Elliott. Windows defender is a free anti-virus software from Microsoft. It comes with a service pack update automatically.
In most cases, if you run another anti-virus software, Windows Defender will be disabled automatically. However, we have also seen situations where another anti-virus software is running side-by-side with Windows Defender. Don't assume Windows Defender is not running because you have another anti-virus software installed. Check your Windows Services to see if it is running when you are having Elliott start-up problems as described in this Knowledge Base.