I was a long time user of Norton Internet Security, but it was about time for subscription renewal, and I wanted to try something different. After an extensive research, I chose Bitdefender because it was highly rated by many famous review sites. After purchase & installation, BDIS 2015 has been working mostly fine for two months, except for slow web browsing.
When I woke up this morning and booted my PC, I suddenly received the dialog Bitdefender Report Wizard: Bitdefender Security Service has encountered a critical error!
I clicked the Submit button and closed the dialog. But right after that the same dialog reappeared. I repeated the same operation four times but the dialog kept reappearing. During all this, BDIS icon on the task bar was grayed out saying it's not active. I tried rebooting Windows several times but exactly the same symptom was reproduced.
Because I'm always very busy in the morning with a lot of jobs to do, I didn't have time to go through lengthy process of BD tech support which usually takes a day or two to get a response. I needed to solve the issue and start my job on the PC as soon as possible.
So I decided to try uninstalling/reinstalling BDIS. I downloaded the uninstallation tool from Bitdefender site and initiated the uninstallation. When the lengthy process finally completed (it took more than 10 minutes to uninstall) my PC somehow lost the internet connection. I rebooted Windows for just in case, but it still failed to connect to the internet. And after a few minutes, I got BSOD.
At this stage, I determined BDIS is too unreliable and not worth any further attempt of troubleshooting. So I immediately went to Symantec's web site, purchased the latest version of Norton Security and installed it. Needless to say, it's working just fine. Ironically enough, after removing BDIS, web browsing is noticeably faster.
I've tried variety of security products in the past, but every one of them kept working flawlessly. BDIS is the first security product which actually stopped working with a critical error. I cannot count on such an unreliable product to protect my system. Therefore, though I still have 10 months of subscription remaining, I will never install BDIS again.
I will appreciate if Bitdefender considers full refund because the product stopped working as advertised only in two months.
