[fixed] Failed to connect to Windows Service

Hello,

/index.php?/profile/208111-thx1138/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="208111" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/208111-thx1138/" id="ips_uid_4272_6" style="" rel="">@THX1138 Please contact our support team via bitsy@bitdefender.com with the logs from the Bitdefender Support Tool.

https://www.bitdefender.com/support/How-to-generate-a-support-log--1168.html

Mmoussa has already submitted a log and our support team is investigating. These two occurrences might not be related.

10 hours ago, Georgia said:

Hi,

Please make the registry adjustment recommended in this Microsoft article (applies to Windows 7 as well):

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/922918/

Then restart the computer and check if this message is gone: "Windows could not connect to the System Event Notification Service service. This problem prevents standard users from logging on to the system. As an administrative user, you can review the System Event Log for details about why the service didn't respond." And also if Bitdefender firewall remains active.

 

Georgia 

People really shouldn't need to go to these lengths. I had the same issue after installing Bitdefender 4 days ago. It is quite clearly an issue with the Bitdefender product ! Luckily for me i had system image back up from before i installed your product so i just removed your piece of crap and my laptop works fine. Bye bye BD, hello Kapersky or any other decent security software.

/index.php?/profile/22428-mmoussa/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="22428" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/22428-mmoussa/" rel="">@mmoussa  Bring up Bitdefender and click on VIEW MODULES, then click on FIREWALL. Choose the "Adapters" tab and locate the network you're connected to. At "Network Type" select "Home/Office" > at "Stealth Mode" select "Off" > at "Generic" select "On".

Now check if you can connect to your network drives and devices.

If there is any recurrence, please continue with the steps from this article: https://www.bitdefender.com/support/-1792.html (if the adapter is set to Home/Office you need to add the exception for Home/Office networks as well, not for Trusted networks).

I will also e-mail you these steps via your existing ticket ID 2017040813350004 to make sure you receive them on time.

Let me know how it went.

/index.php?/profile/208812-feefifofum/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="208812" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/208812-feefifofum/" rel="">@feefifofum Hope that you have a great experience with the other antivirus program and that you will reconsider Bitdefender products in the future. If you change your mind and decide to give us another chance please post back and we will gladly assist you.

Hi,

I also have this problem and I carried out all of Mmoussa & Georgia's recommendations but was still getting the same error.

However, I finally fixed it by running "services.msc" and setting the "Bitdefender Device Management Service" "Startup Type" to "Disabled" in the "General" tab of its "Properties" (Properties can be accessed by Right Clicking the service name), and rebooting.

I may be wrong but I think that the "Bitdefender Device Management Service" is a very recent addition - and it would seem to be at least part the problem.

I have left it "Disabled" and would like to know if that will be a problem?

Could Georgia please advise if BD also find "Bitdefender Device Management Service" to be the problem, and when we might expect a fix?

Many Thanks.

Hi Sorin G,

Thanks for the response.

I ran "netsh winsock reset" from a command prompt with Admin rights as you suggested, then rebooted and amended "Bitdefender Device Management Service" to start automatically. Unfortunately, when I rebooted again the original problem reoccurred.

So I have returned "Bitdefender Device Management Service" to disabled, and (as before) the problem disappears.

I understand that this may stop some product features from functioning properly, but given that the "Bitdefender Device Management Service" is a new service, am I right in assuming that I am not compromising my system's security by leaving it disabled while BD work on a fix?

Thanks.

--------------------

I forgot to mention that the other symptom is significantly increased Windows boot & Shut Down times.

Thanks.

Sorry for the late response, but I fixed my issue a few weeks ago by uninstalling Bitdefender, restarting computer, and making sure there were no traces of it (registry, etc). Then I did a fresh install and I haven't run into the issue since.

Hello,

/index.php?/profile/209083-bruce/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="209083" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/209083-bruce/" style="" rel="">@bruce Rest assured that your ticket was not ignored.

We are currently investigating the matter.

So grateful to find others with the same issue! Moved from Avast to BD today mainly for better spam control in outlook 2016, Win 7 x64.

Dropped $60 on BD suite 2017, uninstalled all other AV, fresh installed BD and outlook crashes on open. Restarts with plugin disabled.

Spoke to support who asked me to run a repair of BD.

On restart Aero is disabled, PC takes forever to boot and become usable even with an i7 and 32GB of ram.

Error pops up stating windows is unable to connect to the system event notification service service.

Manual restart of the themes service to restore Aero works until reboot, performance is super slow.

Back to support, logs etc. emailed with screenshots - I'm waiting on an email/update.

Tried winsock reset, another couple of solutions on youtube - nada.

Outlook still crashing if plugin is enabled.

So far it's been 8 hours of pain!

On 5/4/2017 at 1:40 PM, SplittingDis said:

It certainly looks like a a problem with BDMS (Bitdefender Device Management Service) interacting with something in an unexpected way and causing this issue.

So with that in mind, please can BD confirm that using "services.msc" to manually disable BDMS until a proper fix can be implemented, is OK and confirm that it will not compromise any of the protections that BD provides.

Out of pure frustration I tried this - disabled BDMS and restarted. 

Aero back to normal.

Incredibly long boot time - 10 minutes maybe.

On opening Outlook 2016 I get a Microsoft splash screen with an error saying there's an issue and I need to run a repair on Office 2016. No Office programs will open.

I'm backing up 30GB of emails before I do anything else.

I will try and restart the BDMS and see if that fixes the Office 2016 issue before running any repairs.

I'm ready to ask for a refund.

An update to previous post -

Re-enabled BDMS, restarted. Over 15 mins to boot into usable state.

Aero is again broken.

Error pop-up is back - 'Windows could not connect to the System Event Notification Service service.'

Started Word 2016, 3 mins 26 seconds to open and launch new blank document, program became non-responsive - but eventually loaded.

Started Outlook 2016, 2 mins 15 seconds to open. Tried enabling BD plugin. Crashed Outlook. Restarted with plugin disabled.

So to compare - disabling BDMS broke Office 2016 and made it want to repair itself.

Another update -

Used BD removal tool to completely remove software. Reboot.

Windows loads faster, Aero works, no System Event Service error.

Fresh install BD.

BD updates for the first time.

Reboot.

Load time from boot to windows log-in - 5 mins, 20 seconds.

Log-in to usable state - 8 mins, 25 seconds.

Aero is again broken.

System Event Notification Service error is again present.

Outlook crashes on open, restarts with plugin disabled.

Just ridiculous. No option but to uninstall, will start the refund process.

Hello,

/index.php?/profile/197676-splittingdis/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="197676" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/197676-splittingdis/" style="" rel="">@SplittingDis No need for a ticket, we are currently working on this issue and will update the thread when we release a fix.

The fix will be delivered as usual via automatic updates.

I got the dreaded "Failed to connect to windows services" message as well.. I should have known better because I spent hours and hours trying every idea out there on the net to fix the problem and after experience I should have known to look at Bitdefender FIRST.  I wonder how many other Bitdefender users out there that are having the same problem and have no idea that it is their antivirus system that is the cause of their misery...  Maybe Bitdefender should not be patting themselves publicly on their back about the randsomeware and put out a message to their clients that if they are having this problem then there is a high probability that it is because of Bitdefender.

Would be great if they get this fixed sooner rather than I suspect but later.. Not such a quick fix but for now boot your machine, disable the antivirus for 15 minutes and reboot which with Bitdender will take about 15 minutes then when rebooted without the error message just restart the anitvirus.  Pain in the butt I know but only solution I can find other than finding another antivirus..

On 09/05/2017 at 0:15 PM, Sorin G. said:

Hello,

 

/index.php?/profile/197676-splittingdis/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="197676" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/197676-splittingdis/" rel="">@SplittingDis No need for a ticket, we are currently working on this issue and will update the thread when we release a fix.

The fix will be delivered as usual via automatic updates.

Hi Sorin G.

10 days have passed since that message and I was wondering if you could provide an update?

It would also be useful for users if you could provided a confirmation (or otherwise) that stopping the Bitdefender Device Management Service does not affect any of the protections afforded by BitDefender.

Regards.

On 09/05/2017 at 0:15 PM, Sorin G. said:

Hello,

 

/index.php?/profile/197676-splittingdis/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="197676" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/197676-splittingdis/" rel="">@SplittingDis No need for a ticket, we are currently working on this issue and will update the thread when we release a fix.

The fix will be delivered as usual via automatic updates.

11 days since you posted this.. Any chance of an update? Are we likely to see a fix say sometime this year..  Having been a customer of yours for over 13 years I am now forced to start looking at alternative providers despite the fact that I have over 400 days left.  Bitdefenders handling of this incident is to say the least abysmal.

I'm astonished how calm some of you take this issue.

We are facing here a situation where people pay for a software that should protect their computers and in reality it cripples their computers.

Moreover we face a company which knows  that their product is crippling the computers of their customers but continues shipping the crippling software all the same.

(I also wrote a support ticket about this and still got no reaction.)

So basically "bitdefender" is malware we paid for!

13 hours ago, peon said:

I'm astonished how calm some of you take this issue.

 

We are facing here a situation where people pay for a software that should protect their computers and in reality it cripples their computers.

Moreover we face a company which knows  that their product is crippling the computers of their customers but continues shipping the crippling software all the same.

(I also wrote a support ticket about this and still got no reaction.)

 

So basically "bitdefender" is malware we paid for!

 

I absolutely agree with you and given how long Bitdefender has known about this and the fact that they have not bothered to fix this problem of their causing they clearly are not that bothered about it or for that fact about us their customers.

In most likelihood it is only the most savy of PC users will have come to the conclusion that it is Bitdefender which has caused this problem and have probably spent a great deal of time and anguish trying to resolve the issue with absolutely no help, warning or sense of urgency from Bitdefender despite the fact that they know it is their PAID FOR Software which is causing the problems.

Bitdender should have firstly warned their users as soon as they became aware of the problem and then because clearly it is not a quick fix offered the 2016 version instead of their paying customers having to resort to free versions of other vendors products whilst they drag their heels in fixing this problem. 

I used to recommend Bitdenfender to anyone I knew with a PC.. Thanks Bitdefender for making me look like a right idiot.  I'll not be making that mistake again.

Obviously the Bitdefender support is also more or less nonexistent. The support ticket I sent them three days ago stays unanswered and in this thread they are also not replying anymore.

In the meantime I found out, that the remains of Bitdefender crippled even more parts of my little network even after uninstalling this malicious piece of software they call "Total Security 2017".

It's an absolute disgrace.

Oh so bitdefender have time to delete posts from justified grievances from their customers but no time to fix the shambles that they caused..

Shame on you...

Sorin G.

Clearly this issue is causing considerable trouble to your paying customers, and it has to be said, the fix seems to be a long time coming. It's not unreasonable to expect people who paid money for your product to start getting vocal when you seem to be at best, slow to respond, and at worse simply ignoring their perfectly justified complaints.

In order to minimize the reputational damage and keep your customers on-side BD just need to communicate a lot more effectively. I'm sure all of us would forgive the occasional dud release, as long as we're told quickly and given a workaround / mitigation measure to allow the product to function whilst a permanent solution is sought. The vast majority of people (customers) are prepared to cut you some slack if you treat them fairly and don't ignore them.

That simply has not happened in this case.

I have to say that I have asked twice if disabling the "Bitdefender Device Management Service (BDMS)" would in any way impinge on the protection BD provides but I'm yet to receive a response to that very reasonable question. For me that simple option worked - with the BDMS service prevented from starting my BD works perfectly and has no adverse effects on my system at all. Might that be the workaround / mitigation measure we seek, especially if that module turns out to be nothing to do with the actual protections BD provides.

Incidentally, and in the spirit of trying to get this problem sorted, I noticed that other posters seem to get a problem with MS Office and/or Outlook and that it seems to make discovering a workaround more problematic. It might then be relevant that I don't have MS Office or Outlook installed on my system and the simple BDMS 'hack' fixes the problem completely (I hope!).

BD, please show these PAYING CUSTOMERS (no apologies for the caps) the respect of a comprehensive response which addresses their (and my) reasonable concerns. These things can get out of hand very quickly, and with the greatest respect, so far this has not been your finest hour.

Now after Bitdefeder had the nerve to start censoring this forum while they are still not replying to support tickets I demanded a refund from my software distributor.

It's self-evident that we as customers can't be expected to wait any longer for a fix for this critical issue, especially now that we all can see how dubious the company that should provide the fix acts against paying customers (censoring their complaints, not responding to support tickets)

I hope my software distributor refunds the money quickly so that I'll never have to deal with this disgraceful "bitdefender" company again. Depending on how this matter continues (in particular if there will be more censorship or any objection against the refund)  I also consider informing the specialized press about this.

5 hours ago, Sorin G. said:

This exact issue only affects the Tools part of the product from communicating with the Central account (Device Manager), it does not pose a security risk what so ever. Keep in mind the Tools still function, however they will not report on your Activity page in Central.

It also stops me from being able to log in to my computer as a Standard User, which is the account I primarily use on my computer for added security measures.

For this reason, I had no choice but to uninstall Bitdefender until the issue is resolved.

I'd really like to reinstall Bitdefender, I'm not particularly comfortable running a free version of AVAST.

I have been having the same issues -- the warning pops up that the system could not connect to Windows services.  Background colors are changed and Aero is dysfunctional.  This has been happening since May 9th, and I thought it was a Windows update that was causing the problem, so I disabled Windows updates and have been running a system restore back to May 9th every time I lose the Aero functions.  I had no idea it was a BitDefender problem, though I began to get a clue after I ran the repair process on BitDefender and immediately lost Aero functions.

While waiting for BitDefender to figure this out, I saw a fix on a Windows forum which will work to restore the Aero functions AND, for me, it also eliminated the system pop-up message.  That is to go into the Services window, stop both the Themes service and the Desktop Window Manager Session Manager, then restart them both.  Both should also be set to automatic start.

Sorin G,

Thanks for your response and acknowledgement of your customer's patience.

The lack of progress is a little alarming, especially as simply undoing the BD update that caused all this seems, at least to us users, to be all that's required to give us back a working system! If there's more to it than that, feel free to tell us, I'm sure we'd all be genuinely interested to hear.

 

20 hours ago, Sorin G. said:

This exact issue only affects the Tools part of the product from communicating with the Central account (Device Manager), it does not pose a security risk what so ever. Keep in mind the Tools still function, however they will not report on your Activity page in Central.

So, and promise this is the final time I'll ask - does that mean that using "services.msc" to prevent "Bitdefender Device Management Service (BDMS)" from running will not effect any of the protections provided by BD? (I know this fix doesn't work for everyone, but it does for me, and may well do for others).

Currently, I've removed BD from my system and bought a one year license for Kaspersky Internet Security 2017. I'll treat it as a long term trial and see how long BD take to fix this issue and then decide where my money goes based how confident I feel about each product.

Hello,

/index.php?/profile/209355-evenserv/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="209355" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/209355-evenserv/" id="ips_uid_9924_7" style="" rel="">@Evenserv So far I have been unlucky in reproducing the effect its having on your machine. Will look further into it, I have also notified the devs to look into this as well,thank you for your persistence.

/index.php?/profile/197676-splittingdis/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="197676" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/197676-splittingdis/" style="" rel="">@SplittingDis I'm sorry, didn't notice the question. Disabling the Device Manager from Services.msc will not affect the security of your machine in anyway. /index.php?/profile/209355-evenserv/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="209355" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/209355-evenserv/" id="ips_uid_9924_8" style="" rel="">@Evenserv have you tried disabling the Device Manager from the services to see if you can access your standard account ?

/index.php?/profile/201429-sorin-g/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="201429" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/201429-sorin-g/" rel="">@Sorin G.UPDATE:

After reinstalling Bitdefender, updating it, and disabling "Bitdefender Device Management Service" in services.msc, I shut down my PC. Upon starting it up again, I was able to log in without any issues. So thanks for giving the "All Clear" to disable that particular service, and thanks to /index.php?/profile/197676-splittingdis/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="197676" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/197676-splittingdis/" rel="">@SplittingDis for the initial suggestion and your persistence in getting us a definitive answer.

There's still an issue though...

While Bitdefender appears to be working, the Windows Action Center is not convinced. See attached screenshots below.

At this point I'll have to take your word for it that Bitdefender is working as it should, but I'll feel a lot more comfortable once this issue has been properly resolved.

Hello,

/index.php?/profile/209355-evenserv/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="209355" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/209355-evenserv/" rel="" style="">@Evenserv Thank you for the update, I was able to reproduce the issue on my testbeds and sent all the data to our devs.

Please also follow the steps in the article below to resolve the issue with the Action Center.

https://www.bitdefender.com/support/what-to-do-when-windows-security-center-reports-antivirus-antispyware-and-or-firewall-are-turned-off-1091.html

/index.php?/profile/202566-pdrexel/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="202566" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/202566-pdrexel/" rel="" style="">@pdrexel You can disable the Device Manager service as per /index.php?/profile/197676-splittingdis/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="197676" href="<___base_url___>/index.php?/profile/197676-splittingdis/" rel="" style="">@SplittingDis 's instructions as a temporary workaround.