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Have just renewed my subscription for ten devices, cannot get the subscription to register on a Macbook

rwillett

I have just renewed my subscription for ten devices. It looks OK in Bitdefender Central to April 27, 2027.

I am trying to get a MacBook Air working that was on the old subscription. I would have thought that it would simply pick up the new subscription, but it didn't. It kept telling me that the subscription was ending. I uninstalled Bitdefender and reinstalled it using the option in BitDefender Central, it seems to install but the top left of the Bitdefender Window shows it hasn't collected the subscription.

I've switched account, I've uninstalled Bitdefender 3-4 times and it's always the same, I have no idea what else I can do to get it to pick up the subscription.

Any help welcomed

Rob

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Alexandru_BD

Hello,

Does the issue persist? Do you still see the countdown for the remaining days of the subscription? If yes, tell me if you can find two subscriptions overlapping in your Central account. If yes, follow the steps from the article below to reallocate the Mac device from the expiring license to the new subscription:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/34264/

Let me know if this worked for you.

Regards

rwillett

I ended up removing the entry in Bitdefender Central, I deleted the old installation on the Mac and reinstalled the new version of Bitdefender and then it worked. I gave up trying to resolve it in the app. I've had so many issues with this across all the family devices, I gave up being clever and started again.

Alexandru_BD

Alright, glad to hear you managed to resolve this. 👍️

rwillett

I'm just finishing off with the last MacBook to be done. This is my second laptop. It's an older M1 MacBook air.

Tt will not pick up the family subscription. I've uninstalled it three times now and reinstalled it three times. In Bitdefender Central it says its registered and protected

This is the correct name for it.

However the Bitdefender application on the Mac itself still is not correct

I have changed the account, downloaded reinstalled three times and it still doesn't pick up the subscription. I've rebooted. I think something is left behind when the uninstall program is run as it seems to pick up some existing account information.

This is driving me up the wall. Every single Mac bar one has been a massive problem to install Bitdefender on.

TheNemeses

I’m in a somewhat similar situation due to license/subscription overlap and plan upgrade from last year - my wife and I are basically playing Black Mirror, where we are “on the same account/subscription” but our family devices keep disappearing and cannot be managed by the other. (I already have a long, elaborate support case open just FYI).

rwillett

I've no idea whats going on with Bitdefender. Something is being left behind when doing an uninstall is my best guess. I have no confidence in it TBH now. I'll let it run the Bitdefender subscription run its course til next year, but it's just too painful.

I work in IT, I have worked at the OS level designing Ethernet code for network analysis, I've designed and built compilers, but I can't find the problem. If I can't get it to work, I'll get an alternative AV product for the last Mac and then move the others over as they come to the end of the subscription.

Its far too time consuling for what should be an off the shelf easy to use application.

Flexx

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/362675#Comment_362675

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/362683#Comment_362683

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/362684#Comment_362684

Kindly contact Bitdefender support by visiting https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/help/

Select, How to's & Troubleshooting Bitdefender products→Troubleshooting→I don't know→Contact Support→ You will get the option of chat, call or email.

To get an immediate update, make use of the chat option. Also, ensure that no ad blockers or privacy extensions are enabled in your web browser, as they may prevent the chat window from appearing.

Regards

TheNemeses

Already done sir - have had a few support cases open/reopened since new year, I just hope any of the 8-page written summary and screenshots/errors & discrepancies can help to finally get this issue permanently resolved.

My fear is that the back when I purchased my upgraded/new subscription during y'all's Black Friday sale, and had a current, separate plan and that caused a "conflict" which customer support had to work some backend magic to try and consolidate my plans but without losing my renewal and the number of days left from my original subscription - might come back to biting me in the @$$. 🤐

But even if it does, I'm still super duper thankful for the solid you all did me in making that happen!

Alexandru_BD

Hello,

One thing to keep in mind here, it is not necessary to uninstall the previous Bitdefender version when upgrading.
This can actually break the upgrade flow, because if the software is not completely uninstalled when doing this, there could be some leftover files there and a new installation may fail because of this. If uninstalling is required, the proper way to do it would be to use the dedicated uninstall tool available here.

Now, regarding the issue you've described @rwillett - In Bitdefender Central it says its registered and protected - yes, but that doesn't necessary confirm that the respective device is allocated to the new license/subscription. In Bitdefender Central, check under "My Subscriptions" to find out which license/subscription is actually covering that device. My guess is that the device still occupies a slot from the previous license that is about to expire, hence the "16 days left" message you see in Bitdefender on that device.
There's a 'Manage my devices' option below each active subscription in Central and you can use that to change device allocation, or remove the device from that license/subscription entirely.

Another problem with reinstalling is that you can end up with duplicates in Central, and this means that if you didn't remove the device from Central as well when uninstalling Bitdefender from your machine, the new installation will take another slot, instead of reinstalling using the same slot.

The key takeaway here is that reinstalling is NOT really necessary when upgrading or changing the subscription plan. Because if Bitdefender was already installed on that device, its features, plan type and validity will change according to what's being activated in Bitdefender Central, since the product is linked with that. The main condition for that to happen is for the device to be allocated to the desired subscription plan running in Central, if that makes sense.

rwillett

Alexander

I have done most (all?) of what you suggested.

I just put the new subscription into the system and expected all of my family clients to pick up the new subscription and work. Sadly that didn't happen.
The Bitdefender uninstall tool did not work on any of my Macs apart from an M2 Macbook, which my main one. All of the other Macbooks were running the same version of Mac OS X, though they were predominately M1's apart from a single M4. The uninstall tool just hung and never finished.
I ended up installing from the command line based on instructions I found. I'm very happy working from the command line as I was a long term Unix developer.
Tried the "Manage Devices" options to try and get the Macbook to register to the new subscription and it never worked on the Macbook. It appears to be registered in Bitdefender Central but the client says its not registered.
Checked for duplicates in Bitdefender Central and it looked OK.

I suspect that something is left behind and the uninstall, whether the Bitdefender Uninstall program or doing it from the command line, isn;t fully working. I have no idea what.

I do know that I have spent a vast quantity of time, hours now, doing something that should take about 15 mins. I should be able to install a new subscription and it should just work as it did for the previous 3-4 years. The Macs are pretty much locked down, I keep them up to date, they have nothing but official software on, they are not development Macs (apart from my own), which for some reason worked anyway.

Alexandru_BD

Thanks for getting back. That does sound like a hassle and I'm sorry to hear you're experiencing this..
I still think that there's a problem with the device allocation, in the sense that the device is still allocated on the expiring license instead of the new one.

My advice in this case would be to get in touch with Bitdefender Support. I'm saying this because they can access your account and see what's actually going on there, and assist further. Without knowing exactly what the status is and how the account looks like right now, we are playing a guessing game here and I don't have sufficient information to be able to provide further recommendations. But I'm sure the Support teams will get to the bottom of this. If necessary, they can also schedule a remote session with you. Here's the link where you can get in touch with them:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/help/

State your contact reason, choose request category, then select from the available contact channels, chat, phone and email/ticket. Chat would be the fastest way to reach them. If necessary, you can refer them to this thread. Make sure to ask them to check the device allocation and tell you where the MAC is allocated exactly, because I think this is the issue here…

If I'm right and the MAC is still allocated on the old license, you can leave it there until that one expires, or you can move it to the new license/subscription.

Let us know how it goes.