Why does Bitdefender change its own settings?

Nige · 2024-02-23T12:07:59+00:00

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I've seen Bitdefender do this before, but why will user set settings not stay set?

For example, I set NOT to scan DVDs. It works for a while, then it sets itself back on again..

I set scheduled scans up. Bitdefender ignored them most of the time. I deleted the scheduled scans. Now Bitdefender runs a scheduled scan, but not with the parameters I originally set (i.e. Silent).

What with the incredibly unintuitive UI and the false positives and poor support Bitdefender is becoming really, really tiresome.

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Nige

A quick reboot reveals that Bitdefender is resetting all of my settings after every reboot.

Bitdefender runs a Quick Scan on start up in the foreground even though I have NO custom scans set up.

Tedious and a waste of my time.

Nige

I've just tried the only remedy that "support" ever offers. Re-installed.

For the avoidance of doubt:

Uninstalled from Windows Uninstall
Reboot.
Ran Bitdefender's own uninstall tool for good measure.
Reboot
Log in to Bitdefender Central
Download Bitdefender Total Security
Install TS as Administrator.
Full Scan
Changed settings - Set scheduled scan, turned off scan DVD's .
Reboot.
Scheduled Scans have gone. Scan CD and DVD setting is back to default "Ask"

Honestly, this is such a waste of time. Are you not embarrassed that your software is so flaky?

Or is it me? Maybe you've introduced some hidden SAVE or SUBMIT button somewhere?

PITA to trawl through the clunky "support" process.

Nige

Just to add for the fun, 3 minutes after re-installing Bitdefender from the download page, Bitdefender pops up with a notification to tell me it needs updating!

WTF do you offer out of date versions on your update page?

Naturally the "update" didn't solve any problem.

Ticket opened with "support" and looking forward to months of "don't worry we're still working on this" emails, but not fix.

Nige

Just to update this before I have to go and do some work rather than faffing about with a paid-for utility that's supposed to just do its job.

Setting "Scan CD and DVD" to "Disabled" reverts to "Ask..." after every reboot.
Setting a schedule to the default Scans (Quick and Full). Settings not available after reboot, but scan runs as expected on start up, but does not honour "Run minimised" nor "Close Scan Window". The scan just runs foreground in its window regardless.
Create custom scan. Not preserved after reboot.
Default scan run at start up is not registered in the gloriously useless "Norifications" UI page.

Scheduled scanning has been an issue for years to be honest. Either not running at all, or running intermittently. After months of "support" repeating the same "re-install" and "send us logs" scripted responses, I just gave up and run manual scans myself on my own schedule.

Ironically it now starts working, but not as I set it and with no visible option to either delete the scheduled scan or edit it in anyway.

POS

Nige

Second Re-installation of the day.

This time with the manual removal of the files and folders that the Bitdefender Uninstall tool fails to remove.

No change.

I can only think that the 5 star reviews from "expert" reviewers come from a short time of analysis, and not wrangling with the poor interface and shoddy logging. Neither do those reviewers have to deal with the ... variable .. customer support.

Yes, I'm aware that all the lab tests give this top marks, but it's getting to the point that I don 't trust Bitdefender because I can't properly see what it's doing, and it doesn't do what I ask it to.

BlueBull

I have the same issue, I set it specifically so that it does not scan USB drives, network drives and DVD-drives but after every reboot, it has reset and it has once again enabled those settings and starts a scan if I have anything plugged in and also for my network drives. I'm in IT and as such, I use a lot of USB boot drives with tools on them which bitdefender (rightly, I must admit) thinks are questionable, like password reset tools, registry alteration tools,.... If I have one of those plugged in, which often happens because I practice my work on my own devices, after the reboot it starts complaining about it. Luckily, it does retain the settings to ask me what to do after a scan and to not automatically perform what it thinks are the best actions, or it would have wiped those USB and/or network drives automatically. There is more than 150TB of data on my network drives so I'm kind of nervous about this and have removed the mappings, just to be sure it doesn't touch them (it's only for mapped network drives that scan setting, right? Or does it scan anything it finds on the network?)

I have tried reinstalling but to no avail. This is new behaviour, up until a few weeks ago it did not do this. I haven't had any serious issue with bitdefender for many years now but some update has likely caused this. Please advise

Nige

I wish it were the only issue I’ve had over the years, but sadly in my experience it has always been flaky.

I submitted files for troubleshooting yesterday. They usually pick out a single reg entry as the reason why their software doesn’t work and then close the ticket.

Nige

According to ‘support’ the issues are known by the development team and they will let me know when they have a fix.

Last time I had that response they sent me ‘updates’ to say they were still working on it for about six months. Then the updates stopped and the fix never appeared (that was about scheduled scans not running to the schedule. Still an issue).

ReneHoss

Having the same problems after the last update, never had this problem before of losing certain settings.

All of a sudden I noticed the settings for scanning had changed, on startup I have a Quick Scan, always to run minimized.

I now got a pop up screen with the Quick Scan every time I booted. Changed the settings to run minimized again,

but after reboot it was reset again.

--> It seems that the resetting to the chosen settings from before the update occurs only in the "Antivirus" section and only

after a reboot.

Nige

Exactly the same pattern here.

Let's hope they catch up soon!

BlueBull

Alright, so as expected now it has started quarantaining multiple of my security tools and toolkits on boot, since I forgot to unplug a mass storage device. These toolkits were painstakingly put together by myself over many years of experience. I just had to restore them from backup (which luckily I maintain rigorously) as they were completely gutted and I couldn't restore the files from quarantaine to the same locations they were in for some obscure reason. It also forgot that it should ask me what to do with any detections it encountered and just happily started moving files from my fixed disks to quarantaine. Other custom settings I had in there (like the setting to not scan potentially unwanted apps) have reset as well and that has caused it to quarantaine some other tools, programs and files as well. I'm going to give it a few days and if there is no resolution by then, Bitdefender goes in the bin after more than 10 years and I'm going to seek out another vendor. I know statements such as this usually don't matter much for large businesses but I don't really care either way, this truly is unacceptable and shatters any trust in this security product

Please fix this post-haste. Or not. Thank you in advance

dsanp

So, 2025 and we still have this problem?

BlueBull

No idea, sorry. It wasn't fixed about two months after my last message so in the trash their application went and I went to a competitor which doesn't have such issues, has just as good if not better detection rates, uses much less resources and, also very important to me, has an infinitely more customizable and tweakable application. Bitdefender had been on a steady decline for years in my opinion, with resource usage slowly creeping up towards "way too much", feature creep and bloat increasing and weird issues like this popping up ever more frequently with no feedback from the devs, let alone fixes. The issue described in this thread was just the last drop

I hope for you that they have fixed this but it wouldn't surprise me if they haven't. Good luck!

dsanp

Thank you @BlueBull .

Problem still exists.. Well, seems I'm stopping the subscription too.