Two PC Showing as the Same/SIngle PC

asood

Hello. I have always used Norton or Sophos for my security needs. This time I thought I'd try BitDefender because they claim to be the most effective with the least impact on resources.

I opened a ticket on Jan 15 and it's now Jan 27. In that time, the ticket's just been bounced between support people who keep asking for the same basic information which I clearly gave them more than a few times. I didn't get a single suggestion or explanation on how to fix it. I also asked them to escalate to the next level of support if they didn't have the skills to resolve it. It's been almost a week now that I keep asking for an update and there is simply NO RESPONSE. My ticket number is Bitdefender Total Security 2018 2018011603080001

I thought BitDefender was a tier-1 security organization, but with this type of support, they simply cannot be. Unless I get the problem resolved AND there is better support from here on, I will NEVER USE BITDEFENDER AGAIN.

Here's the problem. I have BitDefender installed on two Windows 10 PCs (PC1 and PC2) and on the BitDefender management panel BOTH SHOW AS PC1. Also at BitDefender Central only shows PC1.

Having contacted support, they said this can sometimes be caused if both PCs have the same mac address. I have VMware Workstation Player installed on both machines, and it generates two NIC definitions which always have the same mac address. These are

Ethernet adapter VMware Network Adapter VMnet1:

   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-50-56-C0-00-01

 

Ethernet adapter VMware Network Adapter VMnet8:

   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-50-56-C0-00-08

I've looked for ways on my own to change them, but based on the info I found, they are fixed when using the VMware Workstation PLAYER and cannot be changed.

I shared all of this information with support (multiple times) AND also sent them the results of the BitDefender diagnostics program (which they asked me to) and have had no response. It's been almost 2 weeks now.

Has anyone else run into this problem or have any ideas on how I can continue to use BitDefender on both PCs, but manage them as independent machines and prevent BitDefender from seeing them as a single device?

Thanks in advance.

A Sood

Sergiu C.

Hello, 

 

Please check your inbox as our support team has sent you an email regarding this issue. 

Thank you!

asood

I opened the ticket on Jan 15 and it is now Feb 6 and the issue is still NOT resolved.

I find it hard to believe how awful the support has been.

I could NOT have imagined that a reputable tier 1 security company's support could be this bad for what should be a straightforward issue.

I don't know how many times I've replied to their emails and asked them over and over for an update and response and no one's responded. It's been a big waste of my time - probably more than the total time I've had to spend with any of the other companies I used before this first/one time with BitDefender.

For anyone else considering this company's products, I suggest you think about the level of support you expect and factor it into your decision.

asood

It's been 6 weeks now (Jan 15 - Feb 11) and it's still not resolved. 

Support is simply ignoring any emails and not responding.

I didn't have any other choice except to UNINSTALL BITDEFENDER and go back to the service I was using before - Sophos Home Free.

cjcherian

"Hit and miss" is how I would describe their support based on two support cases I opened with them since I started using their product a few months ago.

I too saw the same problem you faced. I opened a support case on Jan 30 (support case 2018011119580003). Their initial reply on the same day (other than the auto-reply) was to ask for a screenshot and if I was running any virtualization app. I was running VMware Workstation on two of the PCs that I wanted to use Bitdefender on. I replied to them on Feb 1 noting your forum post and your support case number. On Feb 2, they replied (looking on the logs sent by the Support Tool that I used to create the support case initially), that both PCs had identical ethernet MAC addresses.

Their reply:

Quote

 

Currently, if two devices share the same MAC on any network (physical or virtual), Bitdefender Central identifies them as the same device and this is why it shows only one at a time. This is how the Central platform is designed to work.

As a workaround you can opt for one of the following methods:

A.  change the above two MAC addresses on either NUC or ASUS and then re-install Bitdefender on that specific device. You can find the steps in this article:

http://www.wikihow.com/Change-a-Computer%27s-Mac-Address-in-Windows

B.  Reinstall Bitdefender. Use the uninstall tool below to remove Bitdefender.

https://www.bitdefender.com/files/KnowledgeBase/file/Bitdefender_2018_UninstallTool.exe

Then go to your Central account to install Bitdefender.

 

My reply sent on Feb 9 (actually I got Bitdefender to properly see both PCs as two different installations in Central on Feb 2) was as follows:

Quote

 

As per https://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/doc/ws_net_configurations_changing_hostadapter.html

Quote

"When you install VMware Workstation, two network adapters are added to the configuration of your host operating system — one that allows the host to connect to the host-only network and one that allows the host to connect to the NAT network”

Two separate installations of VMware Workstation on my two PCs, PC1 (what you call NUC) and PC2 (what you call ASUS) resulted in network adapters (Host Virtual Adapters) that had identical MAC addresses on both PCs as your reply noted on February 2. The Wikihow link you provided to help implement the workaround of changing the MAC address was not helpful as there is no MAC address editing available in Device Manager for the Host Virtual Adapters (you can edit just the VLAN and Wake on Lan).

I went to PC2 and used the windows only tools, available at https://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9664, to “manipulate the MAC address of the virtual network adapters installed with VMware Player/Server and Workstation”. Following the instructions on that site, I used vmnetx_rand.exe (placed into my vmware installation folder so it would be in the same place as vnetlib.exe) to modify both Host Virtual Adapters vmnet1 and vmnet8 so their MAC addresses would be changed to a randomly generated MAC address. After a system reboot, the Host Virtual Adapters’ MAC addresses on PC2 were now unique from that of PC1. I uninstalled and installed Bitdefender on PC2 and all was well. PC1’s Bitdefender suddenly required a reboot after the PC2 MAC change, probably because it realized it was its own PC now and not shadowing PC2). Now PC1 and PC2 show up in Central web portal and their computer names are showing properly in their Bitdefender Account info screens.

Please put in a feature request for future versions of Bitdefender so that you are NOT using MAC addresses to uniquely identify PCs in your Bitdefender Central website because, as seen in this ticket, MAC addresses can be spoofed/changed and are not always unique. Perhaps a randomized UUID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier or a hardware ID https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/install/specifying-hardware-ids-for-a-computer

 

Please check out that VMware community posting and use the tool to make your Host Virtual Adapters unique.

PS: IMHO, it's silly that a modern software company is using the numerically lowest MAC address to identify PCs.

 

asood

Thanks for sharing the info, your experience and how you resolved it. I'm glad it's working for you.

The date on the communities.vmware.com post is 2009 and it doesn't list Windows 10 as a supported OS so for now, I'll just leave it as is.

I've already spent too much time on something which should be trivial. I don't want to spend any more time customizing the NICs - in case they are changed back when the VMware software updates, or cause some other issues which will need to be resolved.

I completely agree with your comments about using the lowest mac address to identify a machine. I do hope BitDefender fixes it in a future version or at least give you the option to choose from all of the macs on a PC to associate with the machine identity if the continue to use them for identification.

(This link seems to show another way to change the virtual NIC adapter(s) mac address. I didn't try it so can't vouch for it.)