I just sent an e-mail to customer support regarding this problem, but in all reality, I CANNOT wait 2 days for a response.
I've been a Bit Defender customer for at least 3 years and happy with the product until now. My problem is that I have all of my sensitive information locked in a Bit Defender file vault that is now completely inaccessible to me after I upgraded to BitDefender 2011. Apparently this feature has been removed from the product - without any warning whatsoever. On top of it all, prior to removing the 2010 product (which expired today) and installing the 2011 product, I contacted Tech Support and specifically asked what I should do about the file vault to be sure I could access it after installing the new product. I was told that I could "still use my file vault with no problem" after uninstalling 2010 and installing 2011. This was from somebody named Bogdan Dobre, BitDefender Technical Support Engineer.
In my mind, this is just SO UNACCEPTABLE. Backward compatibility is a major issue for any software product. Something so important as the File Vault just DISAPPEARING and being rendered inaccessible in beyond negligent.