Bitdefender changes GWX Control Panel settings and then disables it.
I am writing this to express my disgust at Bitdefender's decision to support Microsoft's blatant abuse of user's rights of decision, plus I discovered some more issues with it that I find unacceptable. I purchased Bitdefender about 2 days ago after a year on a free security suite that eventually failed on me (and the fact that I no longer get windows updates, due to Microsoft's obnoxious and arrogant insistance on all users installing big brother snoopfest windows 10, and decided to go with a paid subscription service again), and several "best internet security suites" comparison websites I discovered in my research put Bitdefender up there as one of the best. Obviously they were not aware, or chose to ignore, the fact that there are some serious issues, such as:
* As mentioned in the title of this post, Bitdefender changed, without my knowledge or approval, a setting in the GWX control panel to allow windows 10 upgrades, and then disabled the same app so I was not able to disable windows 10 upgrades any more with it. Thank God I had Windows update turned off, or I would have Windows 10 on my pc now and would have to go through the rigmarole of restoring the last image I made of my C drive before installing Bitdefender.
* In addition to this, the booting times and results since installing Bitdefender had been seriously atrocious. I am not sure of the exact time, but it felt like booting my system took at least 10 times the time it used to take. I have an Alienware 14 running 64 bit windows 7 that utilises a 64 GB cache to speed up booting times that appears to be really incompatible with Bitdefender.
* I also use an old "Windows Vista style" sidebar because I dont like shortcuts all over my screen, and none of the components even loaded on system boot. Another program that used to start on boot as a service, X-Mouse Button Control, now fails to run and I am unable to find its service component anywhere in the pc now. Hopefully reinstalling it will fix that issue.
* When these problems occurred, I decide to disable Bitdefender and see if it was the problem, but guess what - THERE IS NO WAY TO DO THAT. Nothing me off more than software that thinks it knows what I want better than I do. I will NEVER have software on my computer that I cant turn off if and when I want, especially if it hijacks apps on my computer (like the GWX Control Panel). Consequently I had no choice but to UN-install, and did so without thinking twice, and I am happy to report that straight after the UN-install/reboot, the GWX Control Panel is working perfectly once again.
This is the first program I have ever purchased (including ESET Security Suite that was a paid subscription that I used for many years before I went free for a year) and then UN-installed 2 days later, thus blowing the AU$77 I spent on it and I will take this on the chin as a learning experience - I really should have, despite the positive reviews, downloaded a trial first, instead of simply believing the reviews, and I would have saved myself AU$77.
I make this post to make other potential Bitdefender customers aware of these facts, and maybe the Bitdefender programmers think twice before treating, as Microsoft does, all customers like morons to be controlled and manipulated, supposedly, for their own good.
Comments
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Hello Mon.
I am sorry to hear that you feel that way about win10 and BD.
As far as i know windows 10 (with latest updates) is most secure and reliable Windows OS by far.
Two years ago I also felt that way, because i was accustomed to windows7 and I was pretty much satisfied with it.
And then I installed win10...yeah it was a turbulent transit, especially within first few months/first original build, but after few tweaks and cumulative updates it got better.
Now after Creators Update I can say i would never go back to win7.
And if you are worried about your privacy, turn off cortana and anything related to collecting and sending data to microsoft.
And about turning off Bitdefender... most reliable way is to start windows in safe mode, run msconfig.exe and uncheck all bitdefender processes, restart and run windows in normal mode. Now BD should be turned off. If you want to turn it on again, just repeat the procedure with safe mode.
Cheers!
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