BD is causing PIA to crash

Forgot to add that adding the PIA exe to the Application whitelist and firewall rules did NOT help at all !!! Only uninstall of BD helped...

Same frustrations with PIA/BD here. Making me nuts.

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/1733/

Hello,

Please contact our support team via bitsy@bitdefender.com with the logs from the Bitdefender Support Tool attached.

Yup the same. For me PIA goes to red colour (from green) in the taskbar after a certain time but when I go to iptrace, it still says it is connected. Not sure why and how to fix it.

Bug reports have been already filed with Bitdefender directly from the PIA staff !! Here is the thread in the PIA forums - LINK

BD is blocking the standard OpenVPN protocol packets. Please fix your software !!!

Tmod700

I used to have BD TS 2018 and went to Kaspersky TS 2018 to fix my issues as they are going to need to rewrite the entire BD TS/IS 2018 to get it to function correctly, Way too many issues with the 2018 release.

Now they won't refund my money like they said they would, Great company to do business with, Have something in writing and they won't honor it.

Hello,

We are currently investigating the reported situation.

Will update the thread when I have more information.

10 hours ago, Sorin G. said:

Hello,

We are currently investigating the reported situation.

Will update the thread when I have more information.

I suspect this issue is related to the slowdowns caused by Ignis.sys, as I describe here:

/index.php?/topic/77343-is-2018-firewall-behaviour/&tab=comments&do=embed&comment=275578&embedComment=275578&embedDo=findComment#comment-275578" style="height:251px;max-width:502px;">

No matter what you do, it won't fix. I've tried everything. It's the bd that needs to fix it.

I am currently running BD Total Secueirty 2018 with permanently disabled Advanced Thread Defense and it is "WORKING"....

On 10/1/2017 at 3:45 PM, FrostyBC455 said:

I am currently running BD Total Secueirty 2018 with permanently disabled Advanced Thread Defense and it is "WORKING"....

I've been talking with Bitdefender and PIA's support for about the last month over this issue. So far the only solution that got PIA working perfectly as it should for at least two days was the same as yours, disabling Advanced Thread Defense. I only did this for two days though so who knows if this was an actual solution. I usually can't go more than a day without the issue popping up so I figured two days was a good benchmark. I stopped doing it because Advanced Thread Defense was turning itself back on (autopilot was off btw) and I thought it was pointless using Bitdefender if it constantly was telling me I was at risk for having it off.

Right now I'm running on a combination of solutions from PIA and Bitdefender, but I've pretty much done all I can. I whitelisted all the files here that were recommended by PIA in the firewall and excluded them from scanning. I actually included them twice in the firewall because support suggested making rules that allowed incoming ICMPv6. I don't understand why because I already had a rule for allowing any protocol, but whatever. I have port scanning detection disabled, stealth mode disabled, Antispam disabled, vulnerability scan disabled, safe files disabled, and all the privacy features disabled. On the PIA end, I'm running rubyw.exe from a permanent folder in the PIA manager folder. Typically rubyw.exe is run from a newly created temp folder every time PIA is launched.

All that said, I've managed to get PIA working and I use that term very loosely. The VPN connection itself is now being maintained which is the most important thing. Unfortunately the PIA app that manages the connection is extremely unstable. After a few hours of use, the PIA tray becomes unresponsive. This is bad if you want to disconnect for whatever reason. To disconnect, you have to manually end openvpn.exe in the task manager and re-launch PIA to reconnect again. I also have to launch PIA from a separate shortcut so it runs the permanent rubyw.exe so that means no auto-launch on login. Since the VPN connection itself is stable, I'm willing to live with it until Bitdefender fixes the problem. I can't say if it was just this or a combination of everything, but disabling port scan detection and running rubyw.exe from a permanent folder got me to this point.

I am a little disappointed in Bitdefenders support to be honest. Some of their steps for their solutions gave me the impression that whoever I was talking to was unfamiliar with the layout of the interface.

Actually Advanced Thread Defense doesn't even want to turn on on my machine now... WTF ? I click the button to turn ATD ON but it goes back to disable automatically. This software is such a mess !!

Georgia

Hello everyone,

Please let us know if you notice an improvement with the live build 22.0.12.161 which requires a system reboot.

Open Bitdefender and click on Update Now, then restart the computer. Then right click on the Bitdefender icon from the system tray (the area near Windows clock), choose About and look at the Product Information number. Make sure it indicates 22.0.12.161.

Check if PIA VPN works as designed now.

@FrostyBC455 you should be able to enable Advanced Threat Defense after following the above guideline.

Well I cannot turn on ATD. My BD was already on 22.0.12.161 ! Do i have to reinstall the whole software ?

https://www.bitdefender.com/uninstall

Hello,

Frosty I would suggest doing a reinstall and using the Uninstall Tool after removing the product to ensure all leftovers are gone.

Lets keep this thread clean, if you encounter further issues with ATD staying on, the thread regarding ATD can be found below.

/index.php?/topic/76646-advanced-threat-defense/&page=4&do=embed" style="overflow: hidden; height: 328px; max-width: 502px;">

After system restart ATD is working. For some reason i thought "shut down" and "turn on" is the same as Restart but apparently not. Georgia was correct a few posts up. Thank you. I will test PIA in the next few days.

After the update I decided to try running PIA normally with port scan detection enabled. After a few hours I got what JoshyBB described. The PIA icon goes red, but the VPN is still connected. Turned port scan detection off and tried again. Same thing happened. The thing is, the PIA processes are still running so to restart the PIA tray I have to go through task manager and manually end every PIA-related process.

welhotar

Thank you Timo, for starting this thread. I've had this same problem for a few months now. The difference is, I'm using Bitdefender Free.

For me the PIA system tray icon doubles down every time this happens. So every few hours, there's two PIA icons, sometimes one is green, sometimes both red. But VPN connection is still alive, no matter the colours. One icon disappears when I hover mouse over it, the other shows option only to exit, not the usual list of connections.

I've made a shortcut to scheduled task to elevate PIA, to avoid UAC.

Just my 2 cents for troubleshooters.

Left the PC running all night last night and in the morning i saw 3 red PIA icons on the task bar which = BD is still causing PIA to crash. When i hover my mouse over them the 2 red icons dissapear. Its like PIA is trying to restart itself. This does not happen when i have ATD disabled.

The problem is still happening for me.

PIA support recommended I do a full reinstall of PIA and if the problem persists to send them a debug log. I have another device running Windows 7 that I left on overnight running Bitdefender 2018 and PIA. I saw no problems there, but I think it may be an older version of PIA, most likely V71.

5 hours ago, welhotar said:

Thank you Timo, for starting this thread. I've had this same problem for a few months now. The difference is, I'm using Bitdefender Free.

You have to thank Frosty for that.

welhotar

I dunno if BD developers are interested with BD Free-users problems, but I really want this to be fixed. So I'm gonna tell that my

Antivirus Free Edition is 1.0.9.31

- Engine version: 7.73366

PIA v.72

Win 10

This happened also with older PIA versions, at least from v.69.

15 hours ago, Timo said:

You have to thank Frosty for that.

Right you are. Your post was the one that I found via google, and I got so excited to find out that someone has found a possible reason for this thing. So your name got stuck in my head. Anywho, thanks to especially Frosty!

No problem welhotar. I just hope BD techs will fix this soon...

Updated to the latest version of PIA(v. 73), but the issue still remains. At the very least it's not as bad. The icon goes red, but the VPN is still connected. I noticed that if I exit that and end the pia_manager.exe and openvpn.exe processes in task manager, the PIA tray will restart and the the VPN reconnects (killing openvpn.exe kills the connection fyi). It's still unacceptable, but it's not as much of a headache. I wonder if running multiple processes has some to do with this? In the words of PIA:

Quote

Two instances of pia_manager.exe will run at any given time because one is essentially a supervisory process — it checks to make sure the other one is doing what it should be, and it'll restart it if it crashes.

It sounds like my ending of one of the processes triggers this feature.

Anyway I'm still waiting to hear back from PIA support after sending them a debug log. Hope this helps for other people.

On ‎10‎/‎7‎/‎2017 at 9:02 PM, Timo said:

Updated to the latest version of PIA(v. 73), but the issue still remains. At the very least it's not as bad. The icon goes red, but the VPN is still connected. I noticed that if I exit that and end the pia_manager.exe and openvpn.exe processes in task manager, the PIA tray will restart and the the VPN reconnects (killing openvpn.exe kills the connection fyi). It's still unacceptable, but it's not as much of a headache. I wonder if running multiple processes has some to do with this? In the words of PIA:

It sounds like my ending of one of the processes triggers this feature.

Anyway I'm still waiting to hear back from PIA support after sending them a debug log. Hope this helps for other people.

Timo, where did you find v .73? I only see .72 available.

1 minute ago, Mgnorae said:

Timo, where did you find v .73? I only see .72 available.

I was given it by support. It must not be ready for public release then. They could be hoping to find a fix on their end for the problem or make it more compatible with Bitdefender before releasing. The "solution" I used in the post your quoted may actually work for v. 72 as well, as long as the conditions are the same. I did notice on v.72 that while I was killing the processes, a new PIA icon would appear and it would try to reconnect. It was only after upgrading that I stopped to test the theory.

It's far from a solution, but I've always kept Task manager running anyway and I only really need to "fix" it when I need to disconnect. You can easily check if you're still connected by hovering over the Network icon in the taskbar. If it shows that you have internet access to a second network called "Unidentified network", then you are most likely still connected to the VPN. You can always check the PIA website to be sure or look for openvpn.exe running in the taskmanager. I haven't had a single case of the VPN disconnecting since the Bitdefender update so I can at least privately browse uninterrupted now.

makstudio

Just to let you know, PIA App seems to use Ruby as the program language to build the PIA App, which accesses Port 1111 and Port 8888 which are tcp/udp communications protocols. Port 1111 and 8888 are sometimes known to be used as backdoor ports for Trojan viruses, perhaps why I believe Bitdefender is cutting the PIA connection when Bitdefender detects a threat. Are Port 1111 and 8888 necessary, I am not sure if these ports are required for PIA to function properly, but I blocked both Ports 1111 & 8888, anyway and PIA App works fine with no disconnect.

On ‎10‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 6:46 AM, makstudio said:

Just to let you know, PIA App seems to use Ruby as the program language to build the PIA App, which accesses Port 1111 and Port 8888 which are tcp/udp communications protocols. Port 1111 and 8888 are sometimes known to be used as backdoor ports for Trojan viruses, perhaps why I believe Bitdefender is cutting the PIA connection when Bitdefender detects a threat. Are Port 1111 and 8888 necessary, I am not sure if these ports are required for PIA to function properly, but I blocked both Ports 1111 & 8888, anyway and PIA App works fine with no disconnect.

By blocking 1111 and 8888 in BD'd firewall, it helped? Am I understanding you correctly?

Thanks!

Bump. BD.

Restart PC, make sure you have BD version 22.0.13.169 I think it might be good with the new version. I am still testing tho. Also i have PIA v73.

Never mind. Its not fixed yet... Just crashed.

Hello,

/index.php?/profile/208408-joshybb/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="208408" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/208408-joshybb/" style="" rel="">@JoshyBB We are aware of the situation and currently working on resolving it.

Will update the thread when a fix is available.

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test

On ‎10‎/‎18‎/‎2017 at 11:19 AM, Sorin G. said:

Hello,

/index.php?/profile/208408-joshybb/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="208408" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/208408-joshybb/" rel="">@JoshyBB We are aware of the situation and currently working on resolving it.

Will update the thread when a fix is available.

Any updates?

blopplop

I would just assume go back to Bitdefender 2017. Is it possible to do that? I don't see where I can re-download 2017.

I've decided to remove BD 2018. It started to quarantine the PIA files. Too much hassle for me. I hope I can somehow put 2017 version back on. More stable IMHO.

13 hours ago, blopplop said:

I would just assume go back to Bitdefender 2017. Is it possible to do that? I don't see where I can re-download 2017.

No you cannot. BD will auto update itself to BD 2018.

Where is Bitdefender support on this? I understand it's been sent to devs. I understand these things take time - but can we get at least a status check?

saltorio

On 10/18/2017 at 11:19 AM, Sorin G. said:

Hello,

/index.php?/profile/208408-joshybb/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="208408" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/208408-joshybb/" rel="">@JoshyBB We are aware of the situation and currently working on resolving it.

Will update the thread when a fix is available.

I just created an account on these forums to add my voice to the growing number of users asking for this to be resolved.

I've been a customer of Bitdefender for a few years, and have been generally quite happy with your software. However, this needs to be addressed ASAP. When the only fix is to disable Bitdefender completely, and Bitdefender is known to be the reason for the problem, having been well over a month this is inexcusable.

wnagy

On 10/18/2017 at 10:19 AM, Sorin G. said:

Hello,

/index.php?/profile/208408-joshybb/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="208408" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/208408-joshybb/" rel="">@JoshyBB We are aware of the situation and currently working on resolving it.

Will update the thread when a fix is available.

Is there any update on this issue?

blopplop

Update please!!!

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/forum/discussion/18865/run-rubyw-exe-from-fixed-location-with-personal-firewall/

Hello,

Really sorry about the inconvenience this issue has generated.

At this time our devs are working on providing a fix.

As mentioned previously when there is a fix or more information I will update the thread.

Georgia

Hello everyone,

We are still investigating the incompatibility between PIA VPN and Bitdefender 2018.

In the meantime, please use the workaround described here to prevent PIA from disconnecting:

We will update this topic as soon as a fix is released.

Thank you so much for your patience and for bringing this up to us.

5 hours ago, Georgia said:

Hello everyone,

We are still investigating the incompatibility between PIA VPN and Bitdefender 2018.

In the meantime, please use the workaround described here to prevent PIA from disconnecting:

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/forum/discussion/18865/run-rubyw-exe-from-fixed-location-with-personal-firewall/

We will update this topic as soon as a fix is released.

Thank you so much for your patience and for bringing this up to us.

What is the security tradeoff that comes from this workaround? It's alluded to, but not specified, in the PIA thread.

ArtyFart

Any news /index.php?/profile/201429-sorin-g/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="201429" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/201429-sorin-g/" rel="">@Sorin G. ? Having a timeline would make everybody feel a little more confident that the end of this irritating issue is in sight.

rangs641

I have the exact same problem. Don't know why I buy Bitdefender at all. Its time to move to some other AV solution

BitOffenders

On 11/9/2017 at 8:29 AM, Georgia said:

Hello everyone,

We are still investigating the incompatibility between PIA VPN and Bitdefender 2018.

In the meantime, please use the workaround described here to prevent PIA from disconnecting:

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/forum/discussion/18865/run-rubyw-exe-from-fixed-location-with-personal-firewall/

We will update this topic as soon as a fix is released.

Thank you so much for your patience and for bringing this up to us.

Would this also affect NordVPN the same? Haven't been able to use it since installing BitDefender

brack

On 11/3/2017 at 3:32 AM, Sorin G. said:

Hello,

Really sorry about the inconvenience this issue has generated.

At this time our devs are working on providing a fix.

As mentioned previously when there is a fix or more information I will update the thread.

I'm another who just purchased Bitdefender 2018 and have the PIA VPN issue. Please let us have a proper fix or even simple work around the link to use a very old work around does not work for me.

saltorio

I tried the workaround (https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/forum/discussion/18865/run-rubyw-exe-from-fixed-location-with-personal-firewall/) the other day, and I couldn't get it to work. I messed around with it for 90 minutes, but had no luck.

I certainly hope BitDefender will be giving some sort of compensation or a discount next year, to those of us affected by this. At this point my options are to stop using BitDefender at all (which I bought an updated subscription to only a few months ago), or having PIA disabled completely (leaving me without VPN protection and wasting the money I spent on a yearlong subscription to PIA).

l've also tried the above workaround but i could not get it to work...

Its been a few months already since it was sent to the dev team. I hope the fix is coming soon.