Bitdefender Erases History Files To Cover Their Tracks

lisasimone

I have been helping BD debug the license issue and update failures for over a week. I have provided tons of information. I have noticed lately that instead of completely fixing the problem, that BD is now trying tweaks and coverups to remove traces of the problem.

Yesterday around 9:30 am EST, BD downloaded an "update" that cleared all my history files.

Everything is gone. All my scanning history. All my update history. And probably very important to them, the huge evidence log of repeated registration and license failures due to their repeated failed attempts to fix this problem.

Then 2 days ago I see an event actually called "tweak" that put processing in and out of "laptop mode" ??? We are their guinea pigs.

But this is OVER THE TOP! My history and log files are MY PROPERTY! They are NOT FOR YOU TO CLEAR! I use these to MONITOR THE STATE OF MY SYSTEM!

Don't accuse me of accidentally deleting them myself - I would have to manually go to every tab and click "clear logs."

Someone on another thread on this topic accused BD of playing the role of Big Brother. You know, after this, I have to agree.

BD has NO RIGHT TO ERASE MY HISTORY FILES!!!

You know, I was just starting to get some better feelings about BD, but all that good will was just erased in one shot.

Am I upset? Yes. Am I in an uncontrolled rant? No. I am just extremely disappointed at how this is all being handled, and this is the final straw. This is INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR (perhaps even unethical?) on the part of a company.

Sm3K3R

don't be sad and keep walkin'

uninstall this soft for ever and go with eset, symantec or kaspersky.

more better.

He doesnt need to ,he can simply use BD 2008 instead.

At least recommend something better than those.There are free ones better than the crap you recommended " />

The first is useless ,the second has spyware and the 3-rd rarelly works properlly (made me reinstall OS few times in the past) .The worst thing is that they cost too much money for what they NOT DO (protect you i mean).

alexcrist

Invalid_key_queen, I think you're a bit too over-reactive. BitDefender updates are unique for all users. If what you say were true and BitDefender DID release an update that erased all events, then this forum would be full of such complains. And this... is not happening.

BitDefender has no way of making individual updates, so you got whatever everyone else got. And as far as I remember, the last product update only contained Dashboard.dll, which is related to SecCenter UI. Nothing more, nothing less.

However, there are some cases when the Events log gets corrupted. Why? I don't know, but it happened to me a few times in the past. The thing is, when this happens, BitDefender does NOT automatically delete the events file and create a new one. Instead, when you open History, it shows a message and informs you about the corruption. You are given the choice to quit opening History, or to erase the event file, create a new one, and open History (which, of course, will show an empty event list).

The event file location is no secret. It's located here:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BitDefender\Desktop\Events\

So IF the corruption appears again and you get the message telling you about the corruption, just press NO, go there and back up the events file.

Most of the times, the corruption was made by wrong writings in that file (not necessarily because of BitDefender fault, but might also be caused by other interference). So most of the times, the content can be recovered. If you want to recover it, send it to me by PM and I'll do what I can to recover the contents.

Cris.

john305

Hi Invalid_key_queen i think you are going to do yourself mental damage with all this hehe . It cant be the money you spent on the program as you have spent hours playing with it surely your time is worth much more than what you paid for bitdefender. If you are not a new user then you can only blame yourself for not trying bitdefender before you bought it. I really think its time to move on and relief yourself of all the grief. Use a dif program as im sure all your debugging stuff was tossed out since you dont work for them. My suggestion is to solve this, move on be happy you cant let the little things in life get to you.

lutz

Don't worry - be happy...

lisasimone

Hi Invalid_key_queen i think you are going to do yourself mental damage with all this hehe . It cant be the money you spent on the program as you have spent hours playing with it surely your time is worth much more than what you paid for bitdefender. If you are not a new user then you can only blame yourself for not trying bitdefender before you bought it.

Sigh. Clearly, you and Cris have not been around for this entire thing (on multiple threads), and it really isn't polite for you to make negative comments to me - "you can only blame yourself"? "Surely my time is worth more?" If the first time you speak to someone, you make general assumptions and also insult them, it reflects pretty badly on you. So please don't comment like that to me anymore. Reply about the facts, not about the person.

Just because no one on a forum complains doesn't mean the problem isn't happening - the logs are not readily obvious, and a majority of users have no reason to look at them anyway. I have been because they are useful for me in this process. Most users are more concerned with the larger functional parts of BD that are failing and have no idea where logs or the history file are. Or care.

My history shows no remarks about corruption - I am well aware of where it is located, if you had been following other threads I've provided screenshots. And you may also know that the history files do not reflect the log files, with none of the corruption info you provide.

So,I ask both of you, please temper your tone that I am the problem here. This is not about me, but BitDefender. The reason I spend time on this is not relevant to you, and I see you are making incorrect assumptions (generalizations) about this as well. I suspect that your replies are well-intended, but only based on your opinions of who/what I do. If you check out the other threads on this issue (search for my posts), they are full of good and relevant debugging discussions, where my research has been very well received and my experiences are mirrored by others. My ire has only been raised by BD behaviors, not mine. Please check there before making these kinds of statements to me here.

BitDefender has finally contacted me by email with requests on tests they'd like me to run. That doesn't sound like an issue affecting just a single person.

I write a blog on debugging methods based on a book I published on debugging. The BitDefender debugging post is here. Perhaps you might find something useful about technology, humor, and solving problems over there rather than just providing generic advice that I go find another program.

I wish you both well.

If you decide you need to reply in anything less than a professional and factual way, send me a PM rather than starting debates on this thread. No one has attacked you - there is no reason for you to continue to speak disparagingly to me.

alexcrist

1) I didn't attack you in any way. It was an objective and fair thing to say that BitDefender provides the same updates to anyone, not only to you, as you tried to imply in the first post. I'm using BitDefender and don't have any problems with the Events.

2) I don't know (or care) what you said on other topics about this problem. I am one person and I'm simply unable to follow each and every topic that is opened on this forum. I choose some of them (based on their topic names) and try to help. I don't follow multiple topics about the same problem or made by the same user. Just ONE single topic should be created for each problem (especially by the same user), not multiple topics.

3) I 100% stand by my statements that I've made in this topic.

Taking in consideration statement (2), this topic is CLOSED. Please continue discussion in one of your previous topics. If you have a NEW issue to report, create a new topic. Otherwise, keep it all in one place.

Cris.

== CLOSED ==