Bitdefender Exit Function

I totally agree with you and dont really want a av program taking control but. As you can see from users today they want to configure nothing learn nothing the program is supposed to do it all configure there networks add pc's the works, they constantly scan the same files every antivirus program has gone this way now and yes it used to be only nort*n still killing the bitdefender process is not a big deal. I just see that they are filling the fuctions that most new users require today the net is not like it was its not safe anymore for new users. I still like Bitdefender works well for me, but im not running it on a old pc either .

Hello,

I used to love Bitdefender. I was using it back when no one even knew about it.

I was always happy with it.

Now, on my recommendation, we bought a few licenses for 2009...

I feel silly now. Where is the EXIT button? Bitdefender has sunk as low as Norton by not including that VERY IMPORTANT feature in any program.

I'm a programmer, and I will make a standalone exe file that shuts down all bitdefender processes. I'm sure many people will like that.

But in the end, I find BD way too invasive, which, again, reminds me of Norton. I hope the bitdefender team understands a comparison with Norton is an insult.

I will probably end up uninstalling it... " />

The worst part will be apologizing to my boss and colleagues for recommending this antivirus.

You may very well be a programmer, but you sure don't act like one. If you don't need it anymore, you uninstall it. Period. Dunno what you'll solve by killing the processes, except for making your machine more unstable, but good luck. If you succeed, tell us too.

I'm not a programmer either, nor am I a "virus researcher" whatever that is. I'm just a user, but I know enough to see that you don't know what you are talking about. Killing running processes prevents the program from starting with windows. Does not effects the computer in any other ways. It's an awkward way of doing it, but it does what the setting "do not start with windows" in "virus protection" is supposed to do but doesn't.

It really amazes me the gall of whoever behind it to do something like that! For safety reasons? Whose safety is that, "evangelist"?

"Killing" a process means stopping it to execute during a session. By any means does not mean that the processes wouldn't start during the next reboot (ever heard of "services"?).

BitDefender has a self protection feature, in order to prevent malware from turning it off. If a user doesn't need virus protection or whatever, it may very well disable those modules. Since you have no ideea about what AV technologie implies, do not write nonsense and make more unaware users believe it, we will end up with topics "BitDefender is a virus, I can't kill its processes!".

Does not effects the computer in any other ways

Sure, it does not affect the computer, except for opening a large door with a welcome rug for malware...

It really amazes me the gall of whoever behind it to do something like that! For safety reasons? Whose safety is that, "evangelist"?

Actually not, those "evangelists" have enough amount of knowledge in order to protect themselfs with or without a security software installed. This self-protection is intended for users like you, who don't seem to have a clue about what's going on on a PC.

I'm not a programmer either, nor am I a "virus researcher" whatever that is

Of course, if you were any of them, you wouldnt have wrote those things...

Well jgray as i have noticed we are not just dealing with a av program we are dealing with bitdefender internet security which includes more than just av and if u beleive the system requirments good luck ms says u can run vista on a 1 gig also enjoy . And yes prsonally i dont need my startup scanned everytime i boot but for new users yes its good. As for functions a new user can install it and have it work unlike older version's that needed everything to be configured. New users have a prob with the net first thing they do is turn stuff off i dont want my customers being able to do that. Just a note for u maybe its time for a new pc as yours is 7 or 8 years old and ment to run the programs of that time if little avg free slows your pc down its time.

I don't understand why people say Bitdefender is taking control. I have control over what it does. I CAN shut it down using third party software if I really wanted to, or I can also prevent it from starting the next time I reboot, but why would you have NEED to do this? Why do you ever need to EXIT out of the AV software?

That is the point. I know TONs of PC users out there that would have no idea how to configure an AV Software correctly. Installing a program would be trouble for them. So making a program install easy with minimal setup is what Antivirus companies as well as many users want. This doen't mean, removing the features, this just means some features have been defaulted to a specific setting but are still changable.

I can hardly read what you wrote, but what functions have been filled that you talking about?

What does this have to do with anything? Bitdefender uses the least amount of resources out of any AV program. I recently tried AVG Free. What a POS program that is. My 2.4GHZ PC slowed down to a 1 GHZ pc it seemed like. Especailly during startup, adding an extra 30-60 second of time to the clock.

In case you didn't notice AVG IS A VIRUS. They claim to be what they are not. They invade your system through your Internet Explorer ONLY. Microsoft has been chasing this for a week or two now and can't seem to isolate it. It is causing all kinds of updating problems with the third party (true) AV distribtors. The Vista system will not let the BD update unless you have your Internet Explorer open. It's a risk to open the Internet Explorer unless you have received your latest (3/18 or later) update for your Explorer from the Microsoft website because they are not letting in update through third party sites using other browsers since the other browsers do not apply to the AVG incident which they claim they are trying to isolate. I see it a different way, though. I see it that MS is trying to force their IE users to buy exclusively from certain AV vendors, of which BD is not included because their product and mission base is so strong and TRUE that it is a clear competitive threat to the US AV distributors. If you think about this further, it doesn't make sense. We NOW live in a global society and the secular societies as we have known them will pass. Until then, we should commit ourselves to a common goal of World Peace and support companies like BD and Softwin who are committed to the same. I did my homework upon being invaded with the AVG or A360 virus and this was the result. I am no programmer, virus researcher or AV company employee. I am a 55 student who hasn't been to school in 40 years. I have been working in the US marketplace as a clerical spet since 1970. We brought up the first IBM 3800 mainframe where I worked in the apparel factory in 1974. Later, in the '80's I worked at Siltec (silicon wafer manufacturer) for 8 years. I have nine certifications in silicon wafer manufacturing, crystal growing among them. I also worked in Title and Escrow most recently since '96, until that went belly up. I must know hundreds of different types of software over the years. I know some BASIC, I remember when hard drives didn't exist and we used two 5 1/2" floppies to drive the system. I grew up with the systems, but my knowledge is savant, you know? I hope these political issues get worked out soon. I wonder if anybody else sees it this way. Well, I'd better be careful, my countrymen will be P.O.'d at me for saying all of this, but for the lowly global power user that I am, it is what it is, right?

You have documentation of this because I call BS.

I have search the NET and the Microsoft site for this so called AVG virus or AVG being a virus and I found nothing.

I have seen compatability reports for AVG on Vista which test fine. Im sure if AVG was a virus, they wouldn't be telling consumers that AVG is compatible.

Unless there is a bug in AVG which is causing issues. AVG Anti-Virus is not a virus.

their antishishing toolbar in the user's brouser in a way that it cannot be uninstalled like any other extension?

Thats the great thing about Internet Explorer in Windows XP and Vista. There is this neat little thing called "Manage AddOns" in the Tools menu. Go in there and disable the Toolbar as whole. I had to do this because it was causing problems. I do think there should be an option to completly disable it as a whole and not just part of it in the BD Software. Although, its not enough to whine about like most like to do. Just disable the darn thing and go on with your life.

this just about summarizes the mentality of a company gone to the dark side

You need to look a bit further into my member details. I don't work for Bitdefender. I say everything as a standard BD user.

and all this technobabble about why it had to be done supposedly to protect us, the poor feeble-minded users

You obveously don't understand how a virus can use that "Exit" feature to its advantage. Although this would be in extreme cases, I have seen it happen to other AV software, I think Norton AV years ago. Once that happends, all your personal information is at jeopardy. Its sad you don't see that.

It has nothing to do with Bitdefender wanting to "take control". They do it for YOUR protection like they say. Its sad, they remove/create code which makes the AV software more ammune to attacks and they get complaints.

Ummm.... Maybe yours. Mine used to update just fine till the day I removed BD. Its going back on today.

I just installed Bitdefender Total Security 2009 on my Vista laptop. Guess what, it updates without Internet Explore open.

Its not YOUR program.............. I still have not see excuses for why BD needs to be turned off and why its SOOO important to do so? I find so many complaints about the smallest things on this board.

2. Too many processes,

3. Too much memory use,

4. Conflicts with other AV programs if I choose to use or install them,

5. Wiping out false positives,

6. See #1.

None of the above is "small".

I think you should put it back.

It's up to ME, the user, to decide whether your program runs or not. That's the main reason, and it should be enough.

Disable it. Its that easy.

Nothing gives you the right to invade my computer like that.

Invade your computer? It was up to you to install it, they never invaded your computer and you can uninstall it. You complain about BD so called invading your computer, a program that keeps your computer safe and clean, would you rather NOT have ANY AV software on your computer?

A secondary reason: what if a new virus infects your product? And the user has no way of closing it? (same thing happens to Norton users and I have to uninstall Norton before I can fix their PC)

Norton ######. The only time I have seen BD effected by a virus was last year and everythign was disabled in it. You can prevent it from starting the next time the computer starts either through removing the process from startup or unchecking "load bitdfender at windows startup". I would rather uninstall it anyways if its that infected so whats the point?

I gave it a 5 minute try this weekend, but quickly noticed "bdagent" does not close on command.

Its gets harder and harder to close it, I have tried, I have been sucessful at it. Its going to be harder and harder for a virus to stop the BD services.

Maybe I need to do reg changes as well while it's off?

you do what you have to, BD im sure doesn't care.

I don't want to "disable", I want the processes gone, all memory used freed up.

See my above post.

A third reason, also important: sometimes you may wonder: "is bitdefender the reason [this] doesn't work?". And you want to check.

Bitdefender is not usable out of the box until there is an EXIT button.

Maybe you need to learn how to use it.

Usually less than 8Mb used. I have seen it up to around 15Mb. That counting all 4. That is while its running behind the scenes and not performing a scan. That is not even touching 30-40-80Mb used for some other AV softwares out there. This is also running BD Total Security.

you mean deleting them? You can TAKE CONTROL over what BD does with these. I have BD send everything to the Quarentine for MY inspection later on.

You look at the total memory of the system before you install the program, then look at the total after the program is installed. The intiial difference is 80-100 MB. After it updates and does it's thing if I remember correctly it goes to over 200 MB! Trend Micro was more, over a 250 MB increase total between before and after.

After the desktop settles down from a boot, look at Task Manager and the totla memory in use. For me it was 135MB before I installed the program. After instalation of just this program and after the required reboot, it went up to around 220-240 MB and that was before it updated.

The setting to 'ignore and deny access' scanned files in BD 2008 never worked. It still deleted suspicious files anyway.

That's why I look at the total computer memory usage before and after.

I agree with every other customer of BitDefender here, that the exit/shutdown function is a must have. I am tired of using Anvir to kill of BD processes and services every time I want to play a PC Game.

And what is this security reason, mambojumbo ppl are trying to pull. If you want security, there are many simple ways in which you can provide the same. Take example of Emsisoft products, whenever you use the Exit/Shutdown option, it shows you a Captcha. Hence preventing malicious apps to disable it, but allowing paying humans to shutdown the software.

Seriously, if BD is skipping exit function in name of security. Its shows they are lethargic and uncreative.

I can see some want this exit button thing and i see no problem with it but for what reasons. Games, cant be u add them to the exclusion list they are not scanned, any program can be added to that list, or file extension . I play crysis @ top res with bitdefender running on vista 64 bit and it plays every well, vista 64 bit at idle uses a gig of ram. As for turning it off to remove malware so u can spend hours of your customer's time and money to hunt down malware today is crazy there are many program's that do this in a few min. One has to look at well shall i spend 5 hours playing with this system and charge them 500 $ and never have have it work quite right or its time for a format 1 hour your done there happy. If you find you have to turn everything off in your pc to play a game maybe that game was not ment to run on your system, also if you have to play the game at a low res theres no fun. if you are worried about the bit of memory used by a av program or some stupid service in windows its time for a new one. As we all know a program or game that does not get enough power to run it, runs errors.

This thread is based on a feature request that we have escalated to the development team in order for them to evaluate it and see if it can be implemented in the future version of our product.

Thank you very much for all the feedback that everyone has submitted, please rest assured that it will be taken into consideration concerning this request.

Diana,

if you think this is all about this one feature you're missing the point. This removal of 'exit' button was simply the most unhelpful and, imo, egregious action that BD has committed in its recent developments. What you need to tell them is to BACK OFF! I can only speak for myself but I think it's a very common sentiment among BD AV users. I, for one, will not renew when my registration period is up unless they do. And what I mean by that is not just putting back 'exit' button, but also:

(1) refrain from installing, irrevocably and without the user's consent, all those other features they've been piling up into the basic AV shield program. All that staff ought to be offered as an option during installation. And please don't tell me they can be disabled. You know it's not the same.

(2) refrain from modifying, again irrevocably and without the user's consent, other applications. I couldn't believe it when I found BD's anti-phishing toolbar in my Firefox, and when went to Tools > Add-ons to uninstall it I found that I can't. They fixed it so Firefox is unable to uninstall it. Another thing, the 2009 version now applies their spam filter to your incoming emails, again with no way of turning it off. And there are probably other things that are just not readily visible.

If they think they can do that, what might be next?

I'd hate to end my subscription because at it's core, I believe, BD's AV program remains very good, perhaps even the best, AV program out there, and they still maintain reasonably good technical support via emails, but i don't think I can tolerate this kind of heavy-handed intrusiveness and contempt for the user's right to make their own decisions what they do or do not want on their computers.

Please keep it ontopic and calm down! Another burst of insults will result in the closure of this topic. Since Diana Bele already said that this suggestion has been taken into consideration and it will be fixed in one of the future versions, I don't see any point in continuing this argument, especially not as aggressive as some of you do.

@arn:

1) If you just want the basic AV shield, why didn't you just choose the BitDefender Antivirus version? You don't have to take TotalSecurity just because the name sounds better. There is absolutely no difference in the common modules between different versions. The AV engine, for instance, is exactly the same in all products, and the firewall is exactly identical in both Internet Security and Total Security

2) Probably the antiphishing toolbar cannot be uninstalled from Firefox, I don't know, I never tried to. But it can be disabled. I keep it disabled since I installed BD 2009, and it never came back to haunt me for disabling it. It works just fine this way. I know, it's not the same as not having it at all, but it's as close as it can be.

3) The product is also intended for novice users. You can't really expect a novice user to really be able to decide if he wants to get antiphishing protection He might not even know what a Firefox extension is... basically, a novice user wants protection, and couldn't care less how that protection is provided. That is why the installation process was simplified. For the advanced user, he can always disable the modules that he doesn't need (like the antiphishing toolbar).

I agree, the user should be allowed to choose what modules he wants, but in the end, this is just a matter of perspective.

4) You have been warned for improper language and insulting a forum member (JGray). Your post has been made invisible.

Cris.

Cris,

I think there needs to be a "Standard Install" Option and "Expert Install" option. Standard install what novice users probably should have without questioning. Expert install option should allow other users to customize the install completly.

Yeah, it isn't good to drop that function. Even ZoneAlarm Security Suite, one of the most watchful and invasive security softwares out there does come with that little handy function of shut down and exit. I for one had to make use of that function many times, just to make sure ZA isn't in the way of my intenet connection(and in fact it was). In such troubleshooting situations it shows one of its points.

Then again, it doesn't bother me much and in my opinion it's pretty pointless in a mere Anti-Virus software since clearing one or two checkboxes doesn't hurt; whereas in a more complex suite like an Internet Security, it's well due.

Let the user decide, not some programmer.

Too many false positives.

Not being able to turn something off is unacceptable. Who do you think you are M$?

Once it's installed, it's my program. If I don't want it running, it's my decesion. Period!

Exactly! I have a problem with a critical program and suspect BD as the cause, but I cant even troubleshoot if they wont allow me to disable it! If I have to uninstall to toubleshoot I will just get a refund and go back to what works. The off button wouldn't be needed if there were any real customer support but you hold and hold only to get cut off, live chat in not functional... How I am starting to hate this company! Guess I can tell my customers that I am just out of business... "economy turndown? No, just bought the wrong antivirus." Unbelievable.