I'm Done With Bitdefender

The BitDefender services constantly stop. Sometimes, I don't even see the BD icon in the system tray. Other times, I do, but the icon is grayed out, indicating the services are not running. Even after uninstalling and reinstalling BD, it might work for a while, only to be disappointed later. I've had BD for severa years now, only to see it degrade. Then there are the little functional issues, such as BD stating "The update has never been performed," yet when I click on "Update Now" or "Fix," it does nothing! Other times, it works. Recently, I got a trojan virus. Not to my surprise, it was because the BD services were not running! I can't have a system wherein the antivirus software might be unavailable. That's too much of a risk. I ended up having to uninstall Windows then reinstall it to get the virus out. Even after a clean install, BD still behaves abnormally.This has been going on since the last year, since v2008.

I'm done. Once my subscriptions ends, I'm looking for other software.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Alex Stanciu

Hello mtgcsharpguy,

At this point we recommend you to upgrade for free to BitDefender 2010 following the next steps. The issues that you described here were solved in our new version and you should not have any other problems after you make the change.

Thank you .

fungus

That is what BD said about 2009 last Fall.

Fungus

kungfu

That is what BD said about 2009 last Fall.

Fungus

Exactly and nothing has been improved,history is repeating itself,Year after Year,have thrown away a 3pc 2 Year subsription, Boy wished I kept it with Internetnet security 10 those were the days <img class= " />

danielmiller01

Just adding my voice as an increasingly irritated BitDefender supporter. I've used many other AV and Firewall programs. Loved older versions of BD and chose BD over others because of it's protection. Then BD 2009 came out, and it has been nothing but constant headaches. It CONSTANTLY needs to be reinstalled on all 3 computers. At times it just gives up and stops updating, or decides it's not going to FIX problems when you click on it. Other times the firewall decides it's going to start blocking network access for no reason to regular applications. I've watched everything running smoothly, then suddenly BD cuts it all off. I turn the firewall off and everything comes back. No settings changed, just BD deciding to do it's own thing.

Right now, I am looking at a warning from BitDefender claiming I've never scanned my system. It's also decided to no longer scan at it's scheduled time anymore, AGAIN. However, when you look at the Virus Scan tab, it says it completed a full scan just the other day (when I manually forced it to).

It's a major pain getting BD to uninstall and then reinstall it.

I've already talked to people trying BD2010. I'm told the newer version is even WORSE. There are endless users I know dumping Bitdefender and have had it with this great software turning into completely worthless software!

I am not saying this to be a spamming forum troll. I am saying this because it is unbelievable that the software engineers have destroyed what was the best product on the market and are ruining the company and software's reputation. Whoever is responsible for this needs a demotion or termination. How can you destroy a great working product? Really, what was wrong with it before when it WORKED? Like the old saying, "If it ain't broke, DON'T FIX IT!"

I am wondering what to do when my license expires in 28 days. I may try BD2010. But if it doesn't magically make a turn around from 2009, I won't go beyond the 30 days and will gladly start paying the other companies I used to subscribe with.

Alex Stanciu

Hello dgenem,

We are sorry to hear about the negative experience that you encountered with our 2009 product . As we stated before, the majority of the issues described in this subforum have been solved in our 2010 product . We recommend you to test and to make an opinion about our latest version, installing it on one of your computers. You can find here complete steps on how to perform the upgrade .

Thank you .

robertbruce

Alex,

The best marketing a product or service can ever get is viral (word of mouth) and user testimonial/referrals. To my knowledge, BD v2009 and v2010 has none of these. The users still complain. By failing to ignore complaints all you (the BD company) have done in failing to meet existing and potential new user’s expectations, is to start the process of your demise as a once viable internet security software producer. Sadly, you are committing commercial suicide and appear to not be capable of deploying a robust recovery programme.

Stop trying to make us accept your mediocrity. We want and demand excellence.

Failing to engage your users and complainers is a very big mistake too. Lurking in the background while we complain is not the way to appease your customers. You need to respond more and prove that you are fixing what is wrong. And you need to interact daily as often as possible on these forums. By doing so you let us all know that you recognise the issues that get raised. You need to retain customers. Instead you stay silent. Your interactions are so few and far between we begin to think you do not care at all.

And so we defect to another product.

If the automotive industry can do a new vehicle recall to fix faults, then I think BD should be able to do a web-based industry equivalent. And don't take a beta product to production and state you have fixed any of v2009 issues until you know 100% that you have.

Finally – we customers are your bread and butter. Never forget this. We can make or break your company. You need to constantly listen to us, learn from us and engage us here at your forums. To ignore complaints in the hope that they will somehow go away of their own accord is wrong. So wrong.

gangadhar007

WOW! I recently bought this product, maybe a few months ago. To be honest, the first thing that comes to my mind is whether the prople complaining here are actual customers or not. If you are, then I really have to worry about the security of my PC. If you are not and are a competitor, then I am not sure what to say about the unresponsiveness of BD.

Having said that, I have started having troubles on and off with the 2009 version, sometimes they do not respond, sometimes the Fix it simply needs fixing, as it DOES NOT fix it. Sometimes it gives me critical errors and so on. I kep reading all these great reviews online about BD. Eventually, I'd have to trust someone, and I hope I can find my answers in these forums of actual customers.....keep posting fellows, its helpful so don't stop.

Alex Stanciu

Hello robertbruce,

We are sorry to hear that you have one bad experience with our product . We can assure you that we answer to our request, post different workarounds and inform our users if we are working on an issue . My colleagues from the Testing and Development team are aware of the issues that are described in this forum and I assure you that they have a high priority.

Thank you for the suggestions and do not hesitate to contact us back for any problem that you may encounter with our product.

Have a nice day.

acapp

WOW! I recently bought this product, maybe a few months ago. To be honest, the first thing that comes to my mind is whether the prople complaining here are actual customers or not. If you are, then I really have to worry about the security of my PC. If you are not and are a competitor, then I am not sure what to say about the unresponsiveness of BD.

Having said that, I have started having troubles on and off with the 2009 version, sometimes they do not respond, sometimes the Fix it simply needs fixing, as it DOES NOT fix it. Sometimes it gives me critical errors and so on. I kep reading all these great reviews online about BD. Eventually, I'd have to trust someone, and I hope I can find my answers in these forums of actual customers.....keep posting fellows, its helpful so don't stop.

As a real customer that has experienced many of the problems noted in this forum with BD2009, I think the complaints are from actual customers. BD2009 worked extremely well for me ... for only 2 weeks. After that, it was extremely problematic. I did many uninstalls/reinstalls/patches. Support was not timely. Nothing worked. Support's final solution was to install BD 2010 where they say the problems were fixed. I did uninstall BD 2009 for the last time but I did not install BD 2010. I wanted to check other user experiences before making the leap. It seems that BD 2010 has many of the same problems as BD 2009. I am in no rush to install it. Using a competitor's product now (using different products on different pcs to see which is best). I do not feel I got value for my BD 2009 2year/3pc subscription.

Good luck ganga.

Sandbar

I have been running BD 2009 (and earlier versions) on three systems at home (2 yr, 3 PC license) on XP Home, XP Pro and Vista for several YEARS, now. No problems with BD. None.

I have installed BD2009 on eight systems at my church (XP Home, XP Pro, Vista, Vista/64) and have been running problem free for a year.

The only thing I don't like about BD is that I can't find a way to suppress the annoying popup notifications that it has found a virus on incoming email. Would love to be able to turn those messages off especially since they open up as the foreground task. That is annoying if I am typing an email, writing my Sunday School lesson, etc.

So, don't know what you folks have experienced as problems, but my experience over the past couple of years with BD has been fine.

Of course, it's probably because I'm weird ... I think I'm the only one on the planet that hasn't had problems with Vista in spite of the fact that I run some pretty heavy hitting applications (graphic design, database programming, etc.) on my system. Vista has been a very solid performer for me.

Ya, I'm weird, eh?

plotdefender

As a real customer that has experienced many of the problems noted in this forum with BD2009, I think the complaints are from actual customers. BD2009 worked extremely well for me ... for only 2 weeks. After that, it was extremely problematic. I did many uninstalls/reinstalls/patches. Support was not timely. Nothing worked. Support's final solution was to install BD 2010 where they say the problems were fixed. I did uninstall BD 2009 for the last time but I did not install BD 2010. I wanted to check other user experiences before making the leap. It seems that BD 2010 has many of the same problems as BD 2009. I am in no rush to install it. Using a competitor's product now (using different products on different pcs to see which is best). I do not feel I got value for my BD 2009 2year/3pc subscription.

Good luck ganga.

We're on the same page. And I am a real customer. I had no problems with BitDefender until 2009 when that crummy realtime shield ball kept going gray and I was catching viruses because I wouldn't notice it until I caught something. And then I'd have to re-boot, several times a day, not to mention trying to get rid of Trojans. And why should I have to watch the ball if it craps out to gray? There's an expectation that you should not have to keep verifying that you are being protected real-time. And BitDefender's response? Install version 10 with all these "miraculous fixes." Well I did that and guess what? It slowed my PC to a near crawl and killed my Internet connection, the infamous blank page syndrome that you can read about in these forums. And no, it didn't fix the gray ball-that still kept happening although when it did it, a splash page showed up announcing BD crashed and the application has to be re-started (which means rebooting) BitDefender's reponse? Some bogus uncheck this and check that and disable this ad nauseum. They don't know what's going on. I spent nearly a day running spyware software after the upgrade because I thought I had a virus but everything turned up clean. I then decided to uninstall BloatDefender and now everything is fine. I'm using another anti-virus program with no BS effects on performance like BD. I feel sorry for all of you that are hanging on for a fix that will probably be even more disastrous than what has been offered.

Hey BD, why don't you refund the rest of my subscription to compensate me for the time wasted on your useless fixes and trying to get rid of viruses that your software let into my computer? I never intend to use your product again.

bikerjoa

I am pretty discouraged with bitdefender. I can't say I haven't been happy with it for the last year although when I reinstalled it last year I had some issues but BD resolved them fairly quickly.

I am now having a problem that I keep getting a message saying it needs to install a BD driver = and it doesn't work. The solution from BD is that I install 2010 which I tried to do but the uninstall failed. When I contacted BD they told me that I needed to run the uninstall and then go into safe mode, delete BD files and then run a bat file to fix the registry. I balked about that (long story I will spare you the details) and then finally thought I would just try to go into safe mode. For some reason I cannot do it and MS is saying that I will need to reinstall the OS...

SO now I am on a slippery slope and all I want to do is uninstall BD so I can use something else. I am afraid if I start the uninstall and it does not work I will get in trouble trying to install another antivirus. I have another 40 days so I am trying to find out if anyone has had similar experiences and can help me.

BD is ignoring me - they will not answer my emails or postings of problems on the website. Very disturbing.

Thanks

kungfu

Hello robertbruce,

We are sorry to hear that you have one bad experience with our product . We can assure you that we answer to our request, post different workarounds and inform our users if we are working on an issue . My colleagues from the Testing and Development team are aware of the issues that are described in this forum and I assure you that they have a high priority.

Thank you for the suggestions and do not hesitate to contact us back for any problem that you may encounter with our product.

Have a nice day.

Nice of you to write that BUT it isnot TRUE !,

You said "quote" Dont hesitate to contact us back for any problem that you may encounter with our product !

I have asked questions to you send PM s to you and Never had a reply .

Like the previous customer said :

And don't take a beta product to production and state you have fixed any of v2009 issues until you know 100% that you have.

I agree completly and am sure Many Many others do !!

bikerjoa

Well BD just doesn't seem to care. They are still ignoring me and not responding to anything I send them nor did they respond to this posting. I have never been treated so poorly by a vendor. I guess I got my last response from them - their solution that does not work for me - and that's it.

tds

I went back to BD Internet Security2008 almost a year ago, had the same problems you are experiencing. No problems since except for BDIS2008 interfering with MSinfo, I have to disable RealTime AV Scanner to allow MSinfo to work. BD answer was to upgrade to BDIS 2010. I had nothing but problems with BDIS 2009. I'm afraid to even think about trying BDIS 2010 after reading the forum.

ralphd

I note here in several posts complaints about the difficulty in removing BD, well I'm here to tell you it's a piece of cake. I got a reminder that my BD2009 was about to expire which arrived on the same day as the expiry date. I went to click on the BD red ball to check the date but the ball had turned it's ugly grey. The real surprise came when I clicked on it and it just disappeared, but on checking my HD, it had gone from there as well just leaving empty folders.

So there it's easy, just wait until it expires and it will self destruct.

Zonealarm is working fine.

PhilaPA312

After three very frustrating days dealing with tech support I, too, just gave up. However, I did NOT give up with pursuing my complaint against BitDefender! But I did gave up dealing with lying tech support with all the niceties and apologies, but VERY INEFFICEIENT! The following is my response to the hours of frustration and lies by tech support:

MEMORANDUM VIA EMAIL THIS DATE

TO: Office of Attorney General

State of Florida

The Capitol PL-01

Tallahassee, FL 32399-1050

FROM: ****** ********* (Tech support Ticket No. 200911231012087)

*** ** ** Street

Philadelphia, PA. 191**

Phone: (215) *** ****

SUBJECT: BitDefender LLC.

6301 NW 5th Way, Suite 3500

Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309.

Phone: 954.776.6262; Fax: 954.776.6462; Tech Support: 954. 928.2780

DATE: November 25th, 2009

Please accept this e-mail as my formal complaint against the subject company. The details are as follows:

BitDefender 2010 was slowing my computer down, freezing up and other VERY frustrating problems. Problems that I did NOT experience with BitDefender 2009. Consequently, tech support indicated that since I do not have 1G of RAM (I have 500 MB's of RAM) that BitDefender 2010 was inappropriate. They then advised me to UNINSTALL 2010 and then download BitDefender 2009, which I did. I was also told that I would receive a downgraded license key for BitDefender 2009, but to no avail. Moreover, tech support kept telling me that they would e-mail a new license key but they have given me the run-around. As of this writing I have been waiting for 3 days for the promised license key.

This company should NOT be permitted to accept my money but not provide for the services for which I paid!

Thanking you, in advance, for your attention to this matter.

PhilaPA312

Well BD just doesn't seem to care. They are still ignoring me and not responding to anything I send them nor did they respond to this posting. I have never been treated so poorly by a vendor. I guess I got my last response from them - their solution that does not work for me - and that's it.

See my post number 19 because I filed a complaint with the Florida Attorney General and I will relentlessly continue with my efforts to seek redress. Possibly I/we might institute a class action against this company. Win lose or draw, they will NOT steal from me by taking my money and NOT providing the service for which I paid.

I will be relentlessly persistent until I get the redress that I deserve!

"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."

If enough of us file complaints with the Florida Attorney General maybe Bitefender will cease and desist from abusing their customer base! Where there's union, there's strength!

BitDefender LLC.

6301 NW 5th Way, Suite 3500

Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309.

Phone: 954.776.6262; Fax: 954.776.6462;

alexandru17

I am using Bitdefender Business at several clients and had no complains. Moreover it detected viruses that other antivirus tools didn't. I can truly say that I am very satisfied with it. As I've seen the client part for workstations is Bitdefender 2008.

Furthermore at home I use Bitdefender Total Security 2009 x64 on Vista x64 and it works very well. It's true, I had a problem with updating and had to reinstall once but i think it had something to do with Vista crashing very often and after I updated the OS i had no problems.

I haven't yet seen a perfect antivirus product because i think it's imposible to have one but I can say Bitdefender is one of the best, at least for me.

acapp

I am using Bitdefender Business at several clients and had no complains. Moreover it detected viruses that other antivirus tools didn't. I can truly say that I am very satisfied with it. As I've seen the client part for workstations is Bitdefender 2008.

Furthermore at home I use Bitdefender Total Security 2009 x64 on Vista x64 and it works very well. It's true, I had a problem with updating and had to reinstall once but i think it had something to do with Vista crashing very often and after I updated the OS i had no problems.

I haven't yet seen a perfect antivirus product because i think it's imposible to have one but I can say Bitdefender is one of the best, at least for me.

It's true that there is no perfect AV software. They all have some issues. I've tried a few and there are issues with each of them. However, my experience with BD has been the worst. BD 2009 rendered my XP sp3 desktop useless (It only substantially slowed down my Vista laptop). Support was neither timely nor useful with respect to the problems on my XP machine.

Good to hear that some consumers have got it working for them. Unfortunately, I still think that there are many unresolved issues and I will wait before I reinstall it. Just over 600 days left on my subscription. Hopefully, they get 2010 working right soon.

Uileag

Hello dgenem,

We are sorry to hear about the negative experience that you encountered with our 2009 product . As we stated before, the majority of the issues described in this subforum have been solved in our 2010 product . We recommend you to test and to make an opinion about our latest version, installing it on one of your computers. You can find here complete steps on how to perform the upgrade .

Thank you .

WOW. Talk about too little, too late. A majority of the issues have been solved in BD 2010? What about to all the 2009 users that got raked over the coals by the 2009 product?!

I have to say that I'm with the others. I had BitDefender, had a problem that spent MONTHS on these forums with people complaining about the exact same problem over and over (only to have someone from BD suggest re-installing the software - which didn't help fix the problem - and constantly suggest that there's something wrong on the computer it's being installed on instead of acknowledging it was a problem with the BD software itself), and finally had enough of my computers being exposed to viruses and possible hacking because BD didn't work.

BD 2010? Too Little. Too Late.

garveyauto

I came across this forum/post because I typed 'gray ball bitdefender' (no quotes however) in Google.

I read the posts here and discovered there are a number of people that have frustration over BD...

I have over 70 licences of BD I use for my company, and this includes several versions since version 2008.

I use it both at home and at work on several computers and deal with it anytime others in the company have issues...

So with that said, I feel I can give a little bit of insight on this product... I do have a question, but first, I will be happy to briefly share with you, comment rather, on the performance of BD during this time, and presently (total security 2010).

The biggest complaints anyone has is that it slows down their computer, this varies on computers that are a bit dated, though I did double or quadruple the RAM in most these computers since installing BD... that did seem to help actually, and allows even our five year old computers to use the latest versions (with Windows XP).

There are still complaints occasionally about speed, and I've dealt them as well... but I understand it comes with the territory... as with emails for example, takes more time for mail to come in and send out of Outlook mailbox because BD is scanning each and every piece of mail. These settings can be disabled... but it is safer to run them, though, it can be annoying...

The Internet sometimes runs slower... and for some reason, when I occassionally run another type of software, i.e. RegistryBooster or System Mechanic, etc... those programs always find TONS of problems... I never undersand how BD is so highly rated, when this is possible that other programs can pick up so much stuff it doesn't... not sure what that's about...

But I will say... any of our PCs running BD, do seem to resist failure or any huge problems, and some of those who chose to disable or remove it... have often been victims of trojans and viruses and needed their computers completely reformatted.

In conclusion... BD is annoying, a resource hog to be sure, and evidently doesn't catch everything (or the other programs are lying)... but it does seem to keep the computer protected and safe in the long run. But does slow performance to a point, especially older PCs... newer robust PCs not so much.

My own personal issue really... and one I've seen repeated on dozens of computers... the gray ball issue, when you're temporary locked out of BD services, and the Internet... What's that about????

This one thing has been overly annoying for me and others... At any given time, rarely, but it happens enough (seemingly more frequently on older computers but appears to not be biased), the Internet stops working, you can't get in for nothing (at which point, you may then notice the otherwise red BD ball is grayed out)... no idea why that gets grayed out, but when BD services are down, you can't access the Internet (which is probably good and bad... services down, you really don't want to be connected to the Internet if you think about it, but bad because, it is a pain being prvented or blocked from using the Internet for no apparent reason, even if just for a few minutes). This seems to last only a few minutes... maybe a little longer sometimes, but always apparently clears itself up... the red ball comes back, and wallah, in turn, so does the Internet.

What BD needs to be... is a program with an excellent firewall to catch all those bad viruses and trojans... spam controls, that are not too intrusive, etc... but they should figure out how to build into it, things that actaully will improve the performance of your computer, so to balance things out.... give you securtiy, but with consideration to not sacraficing quality and "performance" which we all expect and certainly would appreciate.

Those are my thoughts, just felt like sharing... BD does have promise and is the best priced product like this going... but because of these couple little things, I do try to stick it out, but it does make me think to reconsider other products... so please, anyone (including BD if by some chance they are listening) with comments about the gray ball thing... I'd like to hear them...

And your opinions about the speed/performance issues and some explanation why other programs seem to find dozens, if not hundreds of itmes that 'are effecting your computer', that BD seems to miss... what that's about.

Thanks