I now have an additional FATAL PROBLEM with Bitdefender 2020: IT NO LONGER WILL INITIATE on both of these Win7 HTPC machines, both of which have a Ceton TV tuner card in it. This is a NEW ISSUE and I have already opened a support ticket today, 1007470964, and already uploaded all of the support tool files plus additional screenshots to provide diagnostic information.
So we are now going on 3 years since my original encounter with this Bitdefender Central problem of being unable to distinguish these two separate HTPC machines as far as unique licensing and "device details". Because the MAC address is the same for the two Ceton TV Tuner Cards (which appears as a "network adapter" in Device Manager) in each of the two machines, it probably appears that I have tried to install Bitdefender on TWO SEPARATE MACHINES using the same license code??
Or maybe a recent change to Bitdefender Central (in response to my 2019 ticket, finally now 3 years later) to try and distinguish what's going on here doesn't actually work as the developers thought it would?? Certainly nobody from Bitdefender has ever contacted me about this in the past 3 years, so I honestly don't believe there is yet a fix available.
Anyway, something NEW is definitely going on somewhere as of quite recently, and it has TOTALLY DISABLED the boot-time successful initiation of the full set of Bitdefender Services. And as each of my two Win7 HTPC machines containing their Ceton cards was rebooted in the past few days, the Bitdefender normally red icon in the System Tray is now GRAY, with an error message about "Bitdefender services are not responding". They actually do appear active (per task manager, and per SERVICES.MSC) but the Bitdefender icon is gray and not red.
Right after booting the icon is initially red, as I guess the product runs through its boot-time initialization and license verification. Apparently something then goes wrong, and the icon turns gray. And the product is NOT WORKING. And this happens on BOTH of my Win7 HTPC machines with the Ceton TV tuner cards.
Again, note that the supposedly unique network adapter in each PC that Bitdefender Central uses as its "device details" is INCORRECT for both of these machines, since the Ceton card is seen as the FIRST NETWORK ADAPTER in Device Manager on both machines, and the MAC address in these cards is DUPLICATE. It is the second network adapter in each machine (i.e. the Intel LAN adapter) which SHOULD BE USED (as its MAC address IS UNIQUE), but this is not being done.
I am quite sure this is at the heart of this brand new issue that just started within the past few days, and which has now caused Bitdefender TO NO LONGER WORK on both of my Win7 HTPC machines each of which has a Ceton TV tuner card in it.
In contrast, my other 20 machines (all Win10) using Bitdefender all continue to work properly. But none of those other machines have Ceton TV cards (with duplicate MAC address) in any of them.
NOTE: For some reason I am unable to post the screenshot images I'd like to, in order to clarify my comments. The forum says "you need to be around a bit longer to post links". I am simply trying to insert an image, and I have been a forum member for over 3 years!!!
I will keep trying. Rest assured I really do want to include pictures. I only have 4 hours to "edit" this first post. So if necessary I may need to post my screenshots as a "reply".
