Last Attempt To Keep Using Bitdefender On Vista-64

josejuangh@terra.es

Well, after the nice experience I enjoyed with this product on WXP, I decided to use it on Vista-64... Apparently everything went smooth, but after months has passed more and more unresolved issues have been accumulating. The most anoying thing is that, after contacting my localized support (Spain) there was a point that they requested a remote assistance session to keep on analyzing the problem... I was sorry but had to deny it, I don´t let any stranger to access my system, period. If a software requires a human-made "hack" to work, well... I can´t consider it "user-friendly" or "reliable"... I can tolerate things like that in non-critical software (And in any case I do the "hacks" myself) but on a security focused package?!?! Come on, lets get serious.

At some point, 2009 Internet security was offered so I migrated to it thinking that maybe the more than obvious flawed support for Vista-64 version 2008 had has been improved... So far this is my actual situation:

- "bdselfpr.sys not found" error that I had from day-0 in 2008 has followed me to 2009. And the situation is always the same, doesn´t matter how I remove or how many times I uninstall the package... The stubborn installer keeps on adding this service to my registry but "forgets" to deploy the file in my system. Nowhere to be found. This was the initial support request that ended at the "remote assistance" step. This bug wasn't critical but considering the purpose of this service (prevents BD processes to be killed by other programs) I found... Uneasy not been protected by this.

- "Arrakis3" failed to start... More or less the same situation but new to 2009 package. Fails to start with the corresponding "StartServiceCtrlDispatcher failed with 0" error event.

- Probably because of the default solution offered to any problem "uninstall and then install" I have even realized (and had to manually correct) that some special characters as ":" have became corrupted and replaced by "?" at different path strings in my registry (this is new with 2009).

- And finnally the drop that is about to fill the glass. The firewall component is silently dying and refuses to be started the next boot after a clean installation, even as all components have been verified (bdftdif.sys and each NDIS filter attached to each of my 2 Nvidia adapters), basically letting my computer vulnerable to anything that arrives from the Internet. This started after the batch of Vista Updates that was released on early September 2008.

Of course I have tried uninstalls and the downloadable uninstall tool like 20 times since start of September, but when a company releases a clean-up tool that "forgets" to even remove the basic install directory (it doesn´t even bother to touch the "Common Files" contents) you rapidly tend to ignore it and go for lenghty and manual file removals each time you execute the "clean-up tool" making the situation even more time consuming so...

...I look at my 202 days left in my license while checking my 3 weeks period without a working software firewall (Thanks God, that I have my trusty router firewall up at all times to keep some basic level of protection, otherwise my entire LAN would have been compromised weeks ago) so...

...Is there anything to do to fix this situation that do not include:

- Uninstall / Clean / Install loop that solves nothing at the end.

- Opening my system to remote access to some stranger I don´t trust.

I would really appreciate a detailed list of services, driver files locations, log files to check (and if you can provide an installer with debug output would be even better), as my intuition tells me the real problem resides not on the software itself, but on the installation manager that fails to adress properly Vista-64 oddities, specially at driver deploying. I'm a programmer myself so I don´t need generalized all-around solutions that, obviously, do not work.

I consider myself a patient person, but seeing a "security" product dying silently making yourself vulnerable is, basically, the opposite of what "secure" means. And if the bug is triggered because of a confusion from my side regarding BD 2009 compatibilities with Vista-64, no problem, I will just move to oher companies... I just don´t want to keep loosing my time trying to fix something I paid for.

A soon-to-be very angry custommer.

rkba_net

I have also had the BDSELFPR service problem. The BDSELFPR service is not used in 64 bit Vista, Bitdefender left a reference to it in the program by accident. Hopefully this will be fixed in a future version. UNTIL then you can disable Vista's attempt to start the service and therefore element the error in event view. BTW don't even bother trying to delete the service Bitdefender just recreates it....

- Boot into safe mode

- Set the start value of the following keys to 4.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet\Services\BDSelfPr

NOTE: set the start value to 4 on ALL the ControlSet branches...

yours may be called ControlSet001, 002 etc etc...