Contacting Customer Service

This section describes the ways to get support and the terms on which it is available.

How to get support

If you do not find a solution to your problem in the application documentation or in one of the other sources of information about the application, we recommend that you contact the Customer Service. Visit the Kaspersky Support website to contact our experts who will answer your questions about installing and using the application.

Before contacting Customer Service, please read the support rules.

Collecting information for Customer Service

After you notify Customer Service specialists of a problem, they may ask you to create a report that contains information about your operating system and send it to Customer Service. Customer Service specialists may also ask you to create a trace file. The trace file allows tracing the process of performing application commands step by step and determining the stage of application operation at which an error occurs.

To provide better support on issues related to functioning of the application, Customer Service specialists may ask you to temporarily change application settings for debugging purposes while diagnostics are ongoing. To do so, you may need to perform the following actions:

• Collect extended diagnostic information
• Configure individual components of the application by changing special settings that are not accessible through the standard user interface
• Reconfigure storage and sending of collected diagnostic information
• Set up interception of network traffic and saving of network traffic to a file

Customer Service specialists will give you all information necessary for performing these actions (step-by-step instructions, settings to be changed, scripts, additional command line features, debugging modules, special utilities, etc.) and will inform you of what data will be collected for debugging purposes. After the extended diagnostic information is collected, it is saved on the user's computer. Kaspersky application uses NTFS compression to reduce the size of trace files. The collected data is not sent automatically to Kaspersky.

You are advised to perform the preceding actions only under the guidance of a Customer Service specialist after receiving instructions to do so. Changing application settings by yourself in ways not described in Help or not recommended by Customer Service specialists can cause slowdowns and crashes of the operating system, reduce the protection level of your computer, and damage the availability and integrity of the processed information.

About the contents and storage of service data files

Trace files and dump files are stored on the computer in non-encrypted form for a period of seven days after data logging is disabled. Trace files and dump files are deleted permanently after seven days.

Trace files are stored in the ProgramData\Kaspersky Lab folder.

The format of trace file names is as follows: KAV<version number_dateXX.XX_timeXX.XX_pidXXX.><trace file type>.log.

Trace files can contain confidential data. You can view the contents of a trace file by opening it in a text editor (such as Notepad).

Performance trace files can be viewed using the Windows Performance Analyzer utility. You can download this utility from the Microsoft website.

How to enable or disable tracing

Enable and configure traces only under the guidance of a Customer Service expert.

To enable or disable application tracing and performance tracing:

1. Open the main application window.
2. Click in the lower part of the window.

   This opens the Customer Service window.

3. Click the Support Tools link to open the Support Tools window.
4. Use the toggle switch to enable or disable application traces and performance traces according to the instructions of a Customer Service expert.
5. To save the changes, click the Save button.

The collected data is not sent automatically to Kaspersky. You need to click the Create report button to configure and send a report to Customer Service.

If you want to delete all system data, reports, and trace events, click Delete all service data and reports.

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How to make a screen recording if you face a problem with an application

If you encounter a problem with the application, you can make a screen recording and traces and send them to Customer Service for analysis.

When screen recording is on, pop-up notifications are not displayed.

To make screen recording and traces:

1. Open the main application window.
2. Click in the lower part of the window.

   This opens the Customer Service window.

3. Click the Problem recording link to open the Problem recording window.

   To open the Problem recording window, you will need a system administrator account.

4. Select an error category:
   • Error with running the app. Select this option if the application suddenly stops working, does not respond, or reports a failure.
   • Error while downloading data from the internet. Select this option if the application blocks access to the website or the website is not displayed correctly.
   • Activation error. Select this option if you cannot activate a subscription in the application.
   • Other. Select this option if there is no category for your problem.
5. Select the Record the screen check box. When the check box Record the screen is not selected, clicking Start recording only creates a trace file (a service file with information about the application operation).

   The Use DirectX for screen recording option is selected by default. If the recorded video does not display certain windows (for example, the application window), or if you encounter any other issues with the video, try to disable this option.

6. Select the Run the Kaspersky Get System Information tool after a problem has been recorded check box and/or Record low level tracing (optional) check box if you were asked to do so by a Customer Service expert.
7. Click the Start recording button.

   The recording indicator is displayed in the upper part of the screen.

8. Perform actions that demonstrate the problem you are having.
9. Click the Stop and save button.

   Recording is stopped and saved in an archive on Desktop. To access the archive, you will need an Administrator account. In Windows 11, you may need to add specific user privileges to open an archive.

10. Click the Go to archive button.

    This opens an Explorer window at the location of the ZIP archive. The archive contains a screen recording (if it was performed) and traces.

11. Send the archive to the communication channel specified by the Customer Service expert.
12. If you want to delete all system data, reports, and trace events, click Delete all service data and reports.

If your instance of Kaspersky application fails to start, you can run the troubleshoot.exe tool from the application's installation folder to record the problem. The tool provides the same options as the problem recording window within Kaspersky application.