Self referential “Potentially Incompatible Software Found”

Hello everyone,

I recently stumbled across a most bizarre issue and I hope someone could help shed some light about it: this PC with Win10 1903 was running BD Free just fine and, for (ahem... ) “experimental” reasons, I needed to temporarily uninstall it. Reinstallation, alas, turned out to be a bit problematic as the BD Free installer downloads, decompresses, installs the agent and then it suddenly halts with a "Potentially Incompatible Software Found" message; reboot, rinse and repeat… just to discover that the "Potentially Incompatible Software Found" is BD Free itself. Attempts to remove it with the various BD uninstall tools proven unsuccessful (same applies to serveal attempts to force install the BD Free installation blob); a full fledged (using the offline installer) trial version actually worked, however after removing it (Windows uninstall followed by uninstall tool) I was back to square one while attempting the reinstallation of BD Free. After the dust settled, I noticed however that references && remnants of atc.inf, bddci.inf, gemma.inf, gzflt.inf, ignis.inf and trufos.inf are still present in HLKM\DRIVERS\DriverDatabase\DriverPackages and BD is still enumerated in the registry as security provider (both AV and FW, the latter being a remnant of the BD Security Suite) in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Security Center\Provider\Av\{GUID} and HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Security Center\Provider\Fw\{GUID} …also here and there as Chrome/Firefox/Whatever as NativeMessag* components (easily removed); of course I tried to (offline - they cannot be removed otherwise) remove them: no joy - still stuck at "Potentially Incompatible Software Found" (it worth mentioning that said PC works perfectly with no errors, warnings or weird behaviours whatsoever).

TLDR; BD Free does not reinstall as it (I assume) finds remnants of itself. BD Trial installs just fine and the uninstall tools do not really clean all remnants.

Any clue on how to reinstall BD Free? :huh:

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Cosmin V.

Hi /index.php?/profile/216821-geeza/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="216821" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/216821-geeza/" id="ips_uid_613_5" rel="">@geeza,

In order to assist you with the above request, please send us an email at bitsy@bitdefender.com and one of our technicians will assist you.

Thanks,

RedsFan

Probably because of leftovers, maybe look for them with (search) everything https://www.voidtools.com/

Type in search field Bitdefender and remove as many as you can. Try to reinstall BD

geeza

Thank you /index.php?/profile/216000-redsfan/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="216000" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/216000-redsfan/" rel="">@RedsFan – alas there are no leftovers (that I can see; of course I am obviously still missing something): While I further removed/deregistered everything BD related offline by manually importing the registry’s hives and scavenging for remnants – including those HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Security Center\Provider\Av\{GUID} || (…)\Fw\{GUID} – (voidtools’ Everything only managed to find some prefetch data), running the BD Free uninstall tool in safe mode (thank you /index.php?/profile/216822-cosmin-v/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="216822" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/216822-cosmin-v/" rel="">@Cosmin V. and the outstanding BD guys) and reinstalling BD Free (not in safe mode, of course) / reinstalling with UAC disabled (HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system\EnableLUA) / reinstalling as system via SysInternals’ psеxec did not address this weird issue: the result is always the same:

BD Free complains about “Potentially incompatible software found: Bitdefender Agent was detected on your system. In order to continue installing Bitdefeder ANTIVIRUS FREE please remove any other antivirus solution” – Continue && Reboot.
BD Agents eventually installs and complains about “Bitdefender Agent detected Bitdefender Antivirus Free on your system. You must first uninstall this product to be able to uninstall Bitdefender Agent”. Ok && Reboot.
Bitdefender Antivirus Free has been installed (except it hasn’t) with only the big blue “Installing” checkmark.
A subsequent attempt at reinstall (either from the bitdefender_online installer or the uncompressed blob in %ProgramFiles%\Bitdefender Antivirus Free\kitinstaller) only brings an alert about the installer being corrupted.

Roxana G

On 6/16/2019 at 8:29 AM, geeza said:

Thank you /index.php?/profile/216000-redsfan/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="216000" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/216000-redsfan/" id="ips_uid_7167_3" rel="">@RedsFan – alas there are no leftovers (that I can see; of course I am obviously still missing something): While I further removed/deregistered everything BD related offline by manually importing the registry’s hives and scavenging for remnants – including those HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Security Center\Provider\Av\{GUID} || (…)\Fw\{GUID} – (voidtools’ Everything only managed to find some prefetch data), running the BD Free uninstall tool in safe mode (thank you /index.php?/profile/216822-cosmin-v/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="216822" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/216822-cosmin-v/" id="ips_uid_7167_11" rel="">@Cosmin V. and the outstanding BD guys) and reinstalling BD Free (not in safe mode, of course) / reinstalling with UAC disabled (HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system\EnableLUA) / reinstalling as system via SysInternals’ psеxec did not address this weird issue: the result is always the same:

BD Free complains about “Potentially incompatible software found: Bitdefender Agent was detected on your system. In order to continue installing Bitdefeder ANTIVIRUS FREE please remove any other antivirus solution” – Continue && Reboot.

BD Agents eventually installs and complains about “Bitdefender Agent detected Bitdefender Antivirus Free on your system. You must first uninstall this product to be able to uninstall Bitdefender Agent”. Ok && Reboot.

Bitdefender Antivirus Free has been installed (except it hasn’t) with only the big blue “Installing” checkmark.

A subsequent attempt at reinstall (either from the bitdefender_online installer or the uncompressed blob in %ProgramFiles%\Bitdefender Antivirus Free\kitinstaller) only brings an alert about the installer being corrupted.

Hi Geeza,

Thank you for the update. Please provide me with the ticket ID, so I can further look over the case.

geeza

Thank you /index.php?/profile/212173-roxana-g/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="212173" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/212173-roxana-g/" rel="">@Roxana G - I will sent you the information you requested.

Meanwhile... a few further attempts – including a remarkable collection of registry keys’ of almost every AV known to man (even if that PC has been exclusively running BD Free for almost a decade), elegantly lined up for removal in batch file, courtesy of the awesome BD guys – failed. The same applies to creating a new local user, log in and install BD Free (previous variations such as UAC, system account, etc.).

In light of those recent findings, it’s safe to assume that this problem is of “environmental” nature – since other PCs I have around with an (almost) identical configuration do not have any issue with (re)installing BD Free – therefore the most probable culprit must be some wrong permission set somewhere in the HKCR or HKLM hive (I’ve seen that before) preventing the BD Free installer to simply write (or read) what’s needed to complete the registration of the required components and so on and so forth.

TDLR; Something in that PC is preventing BD Free to install properly. I’ll try figure it out and report back in the event I'll be able to address this uncanny issue.

Roxana G

23 minutes ago, geeza said:

Thank you /index.php?/profile/212173-roxana-g/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="212173" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/212173-roxana-g/" rel="">@Roxana G - I will sent you the information you requested.

Meanwhile... a few further attempts – including a remarkable collection of registry keys’ of almost every AV known to man (even if that PC has been exclusively running BD Free for almost a decade), elegantly lined up for removal in batch file, courtesy of the awesome BD guys – failed. The same applies to creating a new local user, log in and install BD Free (previous variations such as UAC, system account, etc.).

In light of those recent findings, it’s safe to assume that this problem is of “environmental” nature – since other PCs I have around with an (almost) identical configuration do not have any issue with (re)installing BD Free – therefore the most probable culprit must be some wrong permission set somewhere in the HKCR or HKLM hive (I’ve seen that before) preventing the BD Free installer to simply write (or read) what’s needed to complete the registration of the required components and so on and so forth.

TDLR; Something in that PC is preventing BD Free to install properly. I’ll try figure it out and report back in the event I'll be able to address this uncanny issue.

Hello Geeza,

Thank you for the update. Please send via email the files required by my colleague to further investigate the reason you have received this error.

stevey_a

Hello all! I have to say, I encountered the exact same problem today and couldn't find any other answers or possible solutions.

I was wondering if anybody has any new updates on the matter.

Thank you!