Backup Bitdefender Settings (VERY OLD IDEA, BUT NEVER IMPLEMENTED)

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/306226#Comment_306226

Hello @TheToolGuy and welcome to the Community!

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us. I must say this is a very interesting idea and we are considering it.

I have forwarded your valuable feedback to our product development team for analysis.

Best regards!

E_X

You've been considering it since 2007 judging by posts in this very forum.

Perhaps it's time to reach a conclusion.

Fifteen years later i say is good enough, no one would accuse you of rushing.

On a less sarcastic note, whom are you people targetting?

Manually adding firewall rules on each and every install? Who does that?
Barely 10 options total, everything automatic, hard-coded and behind the scenes? So as not to confuse.. again, whom? If clueless, if needing things done by the system, with no input, why not stick to Windows Defender, does the job just fine. Why pay for third party programs? Right, fine tuning.. where is that?

Got me the Internet Security trial version and i must admit, you won't be getting any money from me.

Basic options your competition has been offering since the early 2000s are still absent from your own software.

Thank you for reading.

nikant

Upvote for this

Gjoksi

That is not "a very interesting idea", that is "must have an option to backup / export all settings". And the dev team should work on that option as soon as possible, for the reasons listed above. Not to mention that (almost) all other AV vendors have that option in their products. Greetings.

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/307178#Comment_307178

Hello @Gjoksi79_

You have a good point. It is something we should probably have.

I have forwarded this suggestion to our developers for further analysis and I have mentioned this thread for reference. We collect and send user feedback on a monthly basis and I have included your feedback for the next send out. I am looking forward to our developer's opinion. I know for a fact this idea was discarded in the past, but I am not aware of the circumstances and reason. However, I will point out the advantages of such a backup feature, especially for users that have set many rules and exceptions for the firewall.

@E_X anyone that wants the best cybersecurity solution on their devices is more than welcome, we don't need to target audiences really, as the independent reviews and facts speak for themselves 😉

Best regards.

Scott

Especially for those who have multiple devices that may want to transfer those settings to, and who may have multiple exceptions and firewall rules, as Alexandru mentioned.

It's been 2 years…
Does Bitdefender not want this feature or
are the developers unable to implement this feature?

Due to an error in Bitdefender ruring the program update, i had to completely remove and reinstall Bitdefender. Setting up the firewall rules took 5 hours!!!!!

Scott

@Alexandru_BD from your reply above, and since it's been 2 years, is this still the case?

I know for a fact this idea was discarded in the past, but I am not aware of the circumstances and reason. However, I will point out the advantages of such a backup feature, especially for users that have set many rules and exceptions for the firewall.

Kind regards.

I'll tag @camarie here for a more advised opinion. I assume there may be some significant blockers here.

Due to an error in Bitdefender ruring the program update, i had to completely remove and reinstall Bitdefender. Setting up the firewall rules took 5 hours! - I'm very sorry to hear this..

This is implemented for some time now, but it requires a step when uninstalling. So basically when uninstall/reinstall, the option to choose is to pick Reinstall, not Uninstall. This will back up the settings (perhaps not all of them, but I will follow shortly) in Central (i.e. central.bitdefender.com), and when the product is installed again, on the first start it is verified if there is a previous uninstallation with reinstall picked, and, if so, the previously saved settings are downloaded back, replacing the default/stock settings, and notifying the loaded modules "ok, we have settings backed up and restored from connect, so here are these restored settings". Each such notified module then picks up the new values and handles them using their specific internal logic.

Now, it is possible that certain settings are not published to be saved in central in such a case (not all the settings are pushed there), or there are bugs when restoring, notify or (re)loading them, or tens of other possibilities that something could go wrong or not being covered. Firewall rules are saved and restored AFAIK - I know this because I have implemented the save/restore mechanism some years ago, I think it was around 2016 - and firewall was tested with this being one of the modules with the largest collection of settings due to the high number of FW rule entries. I did not reverified this specific area since there were no reported bugs for some years, but I am not excluding the possibility of a bug, malfunction, regression or anything else that might went wrong.

So, in short: for restoring settings for a subsequent reinstall, make sure to pick up Reinstall and not Uninstall.

Now, about the possibility of letting the user to save and restore FW settings on demand: I am escalating this directly to the guys handling this, we are all in the same team so I will skip the regular channel and ask. Will follow up with news when available.

Update: issue "[Feature request] Save/restore FW settings on demand" created. I think it might be useful in certain situations, especially because manually setting these are, as you said, tedious.

Thank you @camarie 👍️👍️

Thanks for the quick feedback 👍️

Petersl

The ability to safe your settings in perhaps a file that you can import when you have to reinstall bitdefender or even be able to migrate the settings to a different device, like when you upgrade your pc but still want to use the same firewall rules, this would defiantly be a useful feature that I would also like to see added.

Thx

@Petersl Noted. The import/export feature looks indeed useful.

Gjoksi

@camarie

Hello.

The export/import feature looks indeed VERY useful.

When i reinstall Bitdefender, i need to go through all settings. With that feature available, all i need to do is to import the exported/backed up settings.

Not to mention that all other antimalware vendors have the option to export/back up the program settings.

Regards.

Nunzio77

Yes, in fact, it's time for Bitdefender to implement it too, now all the other AVs have already had this function for some time.

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/341213#Comment_341213

My problem that the update hangs at 84% and Bitdefender (Total Security) is deactivated has already been repeated several times (Windows 10). I am already in contact with the support team.
A reinstall does not work (uninstall then gets stuck at 20%). The only thing that helps is a complett uninstall in safe mode.
And each time I have to add the firewall rules manually. That is a considerable effort.
I'm already looking forward to the new function to export and import settings 😎

Petersl

Hi @BDurx

I have the same issue, update to new version gets stuck at 84% and trying to uninstall get stuck at 20%, I have this issue on 2 windows 10 laptops. Uninstalling with the bitdefender uninstaller tool works.

There are 2 community post about his issue.

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/100330/bitdefender-update-gets-stuck-at-84-on-windows-when-updating-to-new-version#latest

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/99989/bitdefender-version-update-failing-serious-issue#latest

@Petersl
Thanks for the tip. I will follow both posts.

king of strings

seems a hell of a job to make an "export my rules" setting in bitdefender. A feature request must be made a "CRITICAL UPDATE"

Flexx

@camarie, is there any update on the feature to import/export Bitdefender settings?

Regards

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/343020#Comment_343020

@Flexx Yes. I filed an issue and I will start working on it on the next weeks. I'm not sure if I won't get interrupted by bugs or released, so it is quite hard for me to indicate a first version date. But I will get back on forum (or even better, keep pinging me every now and then).

Flexx

Thank you for the update, @camarie

Regards

durwi

Again it is a year later. Has this been implemented or is there a workaround like backing up specific files?