Local Security Settings In Advanced View ?

G'Day folks,

I'm having one of these days where I cannot find things.

In BDTS and BDIS 2009 -

I need to know where the Local Security settings are which can be accessed in Basic View under the " Security Protection+ and the 1st option "Local Security" !

Where are they in the Advanced View, so I can change them from there, i.e from or in Advanced View - please

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alexcrist

Hello pcbugfixer,

Those are only monitoring settings. They don't actually disable any module from BitDefender, but only disable the feature of monitoring those modules (so you won't be notified if anything is disabled).

In Advanced mode, you can access the monitoring settings only when something is not OK, and you could click Fix all issues:

Cris.

pcbugfixer

G'Day Cris,

Thanks, for the info, however not what I wanted to do.

That these options are not the same in advanced view is not a good idea, in that I wanted to disable the "Antimalware on-demand scan task is in progress" as this brings up an error /!\ symbol when the scan has not been performed and confuses customers as to the actual fault which it is NOT, i.e. suggesting that having not performed the scan for some days is an error when it is not and nothing is wrong with the BD program function.

I have set weekly and monthly maintenance task to perform Full system scans on a weekly basis and Deep System scans every 4th week, so we do not need to be reminded to perform scans.

Some trivia information.

Scheduling automatic scans we also find not to be a good idea, as at times users sometimes do not remember that it is performing this task and attempt to perform a De-fragmentation of the Hard Drive at the same time, which is asking for trouble when these 2 functions cross paths. Making matters worst is when the system is set to perform Windows Updates automatically and then 3 system functions cross paths ensuring that the system crashes and then needing major repairs when it fails to boot up.!

alexcrist

The solution is very simple: disable monitoring for that issue.

Either switch to Basic Mode, disable monitoring, and switch back to Advanced mode. Monitoring will remain disabled.

Either, when the issue appears, click "Fix all issues" and disable monitoring for that particular module. Monitoring will remain disabled in the future.

As for

Scheduling automatic scans we also find not to be a good idea

I didn't quite understand what you mean. Please detail a little more.

Cris.

pcbugfixer

G'Day Cris,

The method you describe for disabling the "Antimalware on-demand scan task is in progress" by going into Basic View, is what we have been doing.

Explaining this to a customer is a little ambiguous and somewhat puts the "Advanced View" into question i.e. as the action suggests that it is not a true "Advanced View" as it has options and functions that it cannot do or is seen to be missing. It is after all the "Advanced" interface which you would think controls more optional system settings than the Basic View.

As to the "Automatic Scheduling" of any Utility program on any Operating System.

Any 3rd party Utility program such as a Hard Disk de-fragmentation (optimization) utility, or Registry Cleaner, or any other utility program that scans or performs actions (alterations or updates) on the Hard Drive, or OS System Files, Must have exclusive access in order to perform it's function and tasks correctly.

If any other utility program such as a Virus Scanner Utility Program or a Application Program Updater or Utility performs it's tasks and actions at the same time while the scanners or registry cleaner also accesses the Hard Drive and OS System Files and attempts to perform an action on a file at the same time, a conflict arrises which normally will generate a system error or failure.

Another example of this conflict occurs when the de-frqagmentation program attempt to de-fragment the .exe (executable) file of the Scanning Program which will cause a BSOD or other shutdown and corruption, i.e. will cause the conflicting programs to crash!

The simple explanation in Novice terms would be to say that, "a Car can only be driven by one driver and not two"!

Hence a Scheduled Utility will perform it's action automatically, mostly in the background without any pop-up screens and nestle only as a TSR icon on the right side of the Start Bar not immediately noticeable by the User. If now any other utility is also executed (run) then the above outlined conflicts and failures can and will occur.

The average PC User in most instances performs little if any maintenance on their PC's and as BD does not automatically schedule virus or other scans like some other Internet Security Publishers do, the conflict is not so apparent if the User has Windows Updates set to run automatically which may occur infrequently and then notices any /!\ symbols on the BD icon and as you say clicks on "Fix all issues" and the BD then starts to perform a Virus scan. However the conflict risk factor exists in these circumstances.

So, in order to avoid any possible "System Utility" program conflict, we do not allow any Utility to perform it's function or tasks automatically !!

Little evidence exists to contradict or disprove our explanations that the above mentioned conflicts, errors and other failures do not occur in face of our experience in repairing such failures which were caused by the described conflicts of action.

I trust that the matter is now clear.

alexcrist

Any 3rd party Utility[...] Must have exclusive access in order to perform it's function and tasks correctly.

If any other utility program [...] performs it's tasks and actions at the same time [...] a conflict arises which normally will generate a system error or failure.

I'm sorry, but I must totally disagree with your affirmations.

First of all, it's physically impossible to gain exclusive access to a partition while running Windows. There are tens of simultaneous processes that hold open handles on many locations on the HDD, and they change those locations very often. I'm not talking about 3rd-party applications, but for Windows processes themselves. Once a partition is mounted in the system (which happens during system boot), nothing can gain exclusive access to it.

Just try to run a CheckDisk on a partition, and set it to "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors". You won't be able to do it within Windows. If you try to, you will get an error stating that exclusive access is needed and cannot be acquired, and you will be asked if you want to schedule the scan for the next reboot (so the scan will take place before the partitions are mounted, so exclusive access can be gained).

Another thing: Defrag tools do NOT require exclusive access to whole partition. Defrag tools first check if the files are in use and move only the files that are not used at that moment. If a file is used, Defrag will wait a few seconds, and try again. If it fails, it just leaves the file untouched. Also, unmovable files will appear, in Windows Defrag's graph, marked with green bars (a very good example is the page file, or hiberfil.sys).

Windows Defrag works in an organized manner, it doesn't just take a file and move it somewhere else. It works like this:

- checks if the file is in use

- if the file is not used, it moves it to new clusters on the HDD

- checks the file to be identical to the original, checks it for reading errors, etc...

- after the new file is validated, the old clusters are marked as free (so the "old file" is removed), and the change is marked in the filetable.

- after that, all processes which request access to that file will read it from the new location.

- of course, defrag needs exclusive access to the sectors it moves. But it locks one section at a time, moves it, releases it. And while that lock is active, other processes cannot access gain access. And also it won't lock files that are in use.

Problems can indeed appear in case of defragmentation. For instance, on power failure there might be data corruption. Or in case of some 3rd party defraggers, which either contain bugs, or are not correctly optimized, and in these cases it's only the defragger's fault, not the fact that some other tool accessed some file. No need to say that Windows Defragmenter doesn't have such problems.

Other corruptions that might appear during defrag might be caused by undeteted bad clusters on the HDD. So if a file is moved to a bad cluster, of course that damage appears to that file. But, again, defrag itself has nothing to do with this (not directly, anyway), nor does the fact that other applications were using that partitions, because bad clusters aren't caused by software.

And also, as you said, Google has no information about what you state. So since there isn't a single case...

I don't doubt that your clients might have had data corruption. I also don't doubt that corruption might have appeared sometime in the near period of a defragmentation. But I doubt seriously that those corruptions were caused by the fact that BitDefender, or any other software for that matter, was running in the same time with the defrag process. Let's be serious, if this were true, MS wouldn't have let it happen, and prevent defrag from happening within Windows.

Anyway, may it be as it may... how exactly is this related to BitDefender? BitDefender doesn't schedule any defrag operations. So what exactly is the issue?

As for the primary question (related to the monitoring options in BitDefender), I will talk to someone about it.

Cris.

pcbugfixer

I'm sorry, but I must totally disagree with your affirmations.

Reply: You can do as you like, except miss read or misinterpret the Topic, which I think you have done! and managed to side track the topic with interpretations and explanations of functions that are not relevant to the main Topic that we started with.

First of all, it's physically impossible to gain exclusive access to a partition while running Windows. There are tens of simultaneous processes that hold open handles on many locations on the HDD, and they change those locations very often. I'm not talking about 3rd-party applications, but for Windows processes themselves. Once a partition is mounted in the system (which happens during system boot), nothing can gain exclusive access to it.

Just try to run a CheckDisk on a partition, and set it to "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors". You won't be able to do it within Windows. If you try to, you will get an error stating that exclusive access is needed and cannot be acquired, and you will be asked if you want to schedule the scan for the next reboot (so the scan will take place before the partitions are mounted, so exclusive access can be gained).

Reply: I was talking about 3rd Party Utility applications, and that Utility needing or should have exclusive access to the Hard Drive and system files ! - don't know why you brought Windows processes into this? - and I think we all understand that the Operating System is active all the time, otherwise we would not be able to perform any of these tasks!

Another thing: Defrag tools do NOT require exclusive access to whole partition. Defrag tools first check if the files are in use and move only the files that are not used at that moment. If a file is used, Defrag will wait a few seconds, and try again. If it fails, it just leaves the file untouched. Also, unmovable files will appear, in Windows Defrag's graph, marked with green bars (a very good example is the page file, or hiberfil.sys).

Reply: No one said that if you only run a Defrag program that it needed exclusive access, - However you would have to be stupid to perform any other tasks while you are trying to defragment / Optimize your Hard Drive, as running any other programs at the same time somewhat defeats the purpose of De-fragmenting the Hard Drive in the 1st instance. Also, what Windows Defrag does and displays in blue , red or any other color, is not what we are talking about, remember it was a 3rd Party De-fragmentation programs. Besides, the Windows Defrag program is incapable of performing a good de-fragmentation of the Hard Drive, in that it is incapable of de-fragmenting any of the System files, i.e. Paging file, hiberfil.sys file, and 100's of other Windows System files and is, in my humble opinion, a waster of time. - We use De-fragmentation Programs that will optimize these files and perform "Boot Time" (off line) de-fragmentation of the Paging, Hiberfil., Meta, and other System files, and most of the time with a 100% optimized Hard Drive and the files it contains!.

Windows Defrag works in an organized manner, it doesn't just take a file and move it somewhere else. It works like this:

- checks if the file is in use

- if the file is not used, it moves it to new clusters on the HDD

- checks the file to be identical to the original, checks it for reading errors, etc...

- after the new file is validated, the old clusters are marked as free (so the "old file" is removed), and the change is marked in the filetable.

- after that, all processes which request access to that file will read it from the new location.

- of course, defrag needs exclusive access to the sectors it moves. But it locks one section at a time, moves it, releases it. And while that lock is active, other processes cannot access gain access. And also it won't lock files that are in use.

Reply: Quite frankly, we don't give a "knackwurst" what Windows Defrag does or not, it's still a waster of time using it, as it is incapable of de-fragmenting a Hard Drive 100% and at it's best will only do a 82.5% job, leaving files that are critical to an optimal performance of a Hard Drive and thus the Operating System, fragmented and still slowing the system.

Problems can indeed appear in case of defragmentation. For instance, on power failure there might be data corruption. Or in case of some 3rd party defraggers, which either contain bugs, or are not correctly optimized, and in these cases it's only the defragger's fault, not the fact that some other tool accessed some file. No need to say that Windows Defragmenter doesn't have such problems.

Other corruptions that might appear during defrag might be caused by undetected bad clusters on the HDD. So if a file is moved to a bad cluster, of course that damage appears to that file. But, again, defrag itself has nothing to do with this (not directly, anyway), nor does the fact that other applications were using that partitions, because bad clusters aren't caused by software.

Reply: To suggest that, relating to Power Failures, the Quote. "No need to say that Windows De-fragmenter doesn't have such problems. " That's not correct in any sense, as a Power Failure can completely destroy a Hard Drive (Blow it) and or Wipe, Destroy or otherwise corrupt files on a Hard Drive to the extent that the access to it is impossible, let alone cause corruption to the files that were being de-fragmented at the time of the Power Failure! Comment on your second paragraph, The 3rd Party de-fragmentation programs we use detect at the beginning, if a Hard Disk contains bad sectors or clusters and refuses to perform the operation until the disk is verified and operational (free of bad sectors etc.) for the task.

And also, as you said, Google has no information about what you state. So since there isn't a single case...

Reply: Firstly you could not have looked very hard, Try harder next time "Disk Corruption Causes" or "Defragmentation corruption causes" or "File System Corruption - Causes and Consequences" there are 1000's of other subjects that deal with the issue and are related to my topic and Case Scenario. "ALL ON GOOGLE" by the way!

I don't doubt that your clients might have had data corruption. I also don't doubt that corruption might have appeared sometime in the near period of a defragmentation. But I doubt seriously that those corruptions were caused by the fact that BitDefender, or any other software for that matter, was running in the same time with the defrag process. Let's be serious, if this were true, MS wouldn't have let it happen, and prevent defrag from happening within Windows.

Reply: Obviously your experience in performing Repairs, and perhaps Maintenance, on Computers is limited, yet again your comment is only related to your explanations of the topic and related comments, and has little bearing on or to the original. THERE IS NO MENTION OF BITDEFENDER HAVING CAUSED THIS TYPE OF FAILURE - However if BD is run at the same time that other utilities are run as previously mentioned, then the corruption and failures we have outlined can occur and do not need a power failure to do so!

Anyway, may it be as it may... how exactly is this related to BitDefender? BitDefender doesn't schedule any defrag operations. So what exactly is the issue?

Reply: As usual, half reading and jumping the gun. What we said was, Quote, "The average PC User in most instances performs little if any maintenance on their PC's and as BD does not automatically schedule virus or other scans like some other Internet Security Publishers do, the ...." IS WHAT WE SAID!

As for the primary question (related to the monitoring options in BitDefender), I will talk to someone about it.

Reply: Yes you should spend more time looking at reality and fixing anomalies and inaccuracies in the BD software..

Cris.

Cris, at times you are good and at other times it must be your alter ego that comes out with these off topic and side tracking remarks and other unrelated issues. I do not know what you are trying to achieve by doing this ( I can guess ) however I will let other decide what it is.

alexcrist

Reply: You can do as you like, except miss read or misinterpret the Topic, which I think you have done! and managed to side track the topic with interpretations and explanations of functions that are not relevant to the main Topic that we started with.

Miss read, no. Miss interpret, maybe.

I say again: I have no idea what you try to point out (as I said in my first reply in this post). If I miss-interpreted your post, then I plead guilty as charged, but only because you didn't exactly point out the conclusion, the question, what is it about.

Reply: I was talking about 3rd Party Utility applications, and that Utility needing or should have exclusive access to the Hard Drive and system files ! - don't know why you brought Windows processes into this? - and I think we all understand that the Operating System is active all the time, otherwise we would not be able to perform any of these tasks!

I was trying to point out that even tens of Windows processes hold open handles all over the disc. Of course 3rd party applications also do that, but since the OS does it, mentioning 3rd party processes is of no real use.

Reply: No one said that if you only run a Defrag program that it needed exclusive access, - However you would have to be stupid to perform any other tasks while you are trying to defragment / Optimize your Hard Drive, as running any other programs at the same time somewhat defeats the purpose of De-fragmenting the Hard Drive in the 1st instance. Also, what Windows Defrag does and displays in blue , red or any other color, is not what we are talking about, remember it was a 3rd Party De-fragmentation programs. Besides, the Windows Defrag program is incapable of performing a good de-fragmentation of the Hard Drive, in that it is incapable of de-fragmenting any of the System files, i.e. Paging file, hiberfil.sys file, and 100's of other Windows System files and is, in my humble opinion, a waster of time. - We use De-fragmentation Programs that will optimize these files and perform "Boot Time" (off line) de-fragmentation of the Paging, Hiberfil., Meta, and other System files, and most of the time with a 100% optimized Hard Drive and the files it contains!.

I never had any problems, ever, while running other applications during defrag. And yes, I only use Windows Defrag.

Also, defrag doesn't even bring that much of a performance boot_s either. And it's not only me that's saying this...

Reply: Quite frankly, we don't give a "knackwurst" what Windows Defrag does or not, it's still a waster of time using it, as it is incapable of de-fragmenting a Hard Drive 100% and at it's best will only do a 82.5% job, leaving files that are critical to an optimal performance of a Hard Drive and thus the Operating System, fragmented and still slowing the system.

Well, maybe you don't. But that is the logical way to do it. If other 3rd party apps do t another way, it's their problem. And if corruptions appear, it's also those apps' problem (and their developers').

Reply: To suggest that, relating to Power Failures, the Quote. "No need to say that Windows De-fragmenter doesn't have such problems. " That's not correct in any sense, as a Power Failure can completely destroy a Hard Drive (Blow it) and or Wipe, Destroy or otherwise corrupt files on a Hard Drive to the extent that the access to it is impossible, let alone cause corruption to the files that were being de-fragmented at the time of the Power Failure! Comment on your second paragraph, The 3rd Party de-fragmentation programs we use detect at the beginning, if a Hard Disk contains bad sectors or clusters and refuses to perform the operation until the disk is verified and operational (free of bad sectors etc.) for the task.

OK, my bad of poor statement. I never intended to say that Windows Defrag can't damage files in case of a power failure. That comment was only targeted at "contain bugs, or are not correctly optimized".

Windows Defrag also scans the disk for errors and refuses to defrag if filesystem errors are found. Granted, it doesn't scan for bad sectors (it just scans for filetable and filesystem errors), but bad sector scanning takes a huge time and it would really be a waste of time to do it everytime a defrag is made. But...this is a matter of user's choice, in the end. So if you want to be on the safe side, good for you.

Reply: Firstly you could not have looked very hard, Try harder next time "Disk Corruption Causes" or "Defragmentation corruption causes" or "File System Corruption - Causes and Consequences" there are 1000's of other subjects that deal with the issue and are related to my topic and Case Scenario. "ALL ON GOOGLE" by the way!

Thank you for the links. I will take a look at them when I have some time.

However, why didn't you post them from the beginning? You said, and I quote: Little evidence exists to contradict or disprove our explanations that the above mentioned conflicts, errors and other failures do not occur in face of our experience in repairing such failures which were caused by the described conflicts of action., so you acknoledged that no information appears on the web about what you said.

THERE IS NO MENTION OF BITDEFENDER HAVING CAUSED THIS TYPE OF FAILURE - However if BD is run at the same time that other utilities are run as previously mentioned, then the corruption and failures we have outlined can occur and do not need a power failure to do so!

No, they won't appear. And I'll happily prove it on my own system, any time, any where.

Well...at least they won't appear in case your using Windows Defrag. As I said, if you use other 3rd party tools and you experience corruption just because you had your antivirus scanning for something, then that's a matter that you should discuss with the producer of the defrag tool, not with the company that produces the antivirus. And you SHOULD discuss it, because it's a serious problem... and it's not the problem of the antivirus, but a problem of the defrag tool.

Let's take it another way: if this corruption is totally inevitable, then why on Earth did the devs make that tool work that way? Can't they realize that they put the user's files in danger? Or maybe there's a written warning about it in the Help file of the defrag tool, somewhere...

Reply: As usual, half reading and jumping the gun. What we said was, Quote, "The average PC User in most instances performs little if any maintenance on their PC's and as BD does not automatically schedule virus or other scans like some other Internet Security Publishers do, the ...." IS WHAT WE SAID!

Yes, you did...and I ask again, what exactly is the issue? Why did you bring it up in the first place? There's no problem, as I can see it, since BitDefender doesn't schedule any system tasks.

Scheduling antivirus scans is a very good thing. As you said, you use this feature yourself. So, even if I repeat myself... what exactly is the issue? Make me understand, so I won't miss-interpret your posts again.

Reply: Yes you should spend more time looking at reality and fixing anomalies and inaccuracies in the BD software..

Well, that is none of my business actually.

I don't work for BitDefender, as I said multiple times on this forum. I here just to provide support.

Well thank you for your opinion.

As I said, maybe I miss-understood the post and that's why I made all the comments. I asked you the first time to provide more details, and because I also didn't understand the issue from your second post, I just went ahead with comments about what I assumed was the question.

Don't get me wrong, I don't try to "look good" for anyone. I noticed your topic, I tried to help. Nothing more, nothing less.

The average PC User in most instances performs little if any maintenance on their PC's and as BD does not automatically schedule virus or other scans like some other Internet Security Publishers do, the conflict is not so apparent if the User has Windows Updates set to run automatically which may occur infrequently and then notices any /!\ symbols on the BD icon and as you say clicks on "Fix all issues" and the BD then starts to perform a Virus scan. However the conflict risk factor exists in these circumstances.

Just look at this single quote. Ignore everything else you've said in this topic, and look and think only about what you've said in the above quote. And then explain me what exactly is the issue, cos I just can't figure it out...

I'm not trying to mock you about it. Communication issues are very common, especially between people from different countries (in our case, different continents) which have a different native language.

Cris.

pcbugfixer

Well now Cris,

Yes, there does seem to be a problem with communication issues, and they are very common, Quote. "... especially between people from different countries, (in our case, different continents) which have a different native language".

However I do think in this case. a different planet and also yes to the fact that you can only contribute what you know and the input you give is limited by that fact.

It is obvious also that you did not understand the issue in the first place and perhaps should not have been a wisenheimer and attempted to respond with the information relative to 'one" specific piece of software and the limited experience from it, i.e. the windows fragmentation program.

Most problems require a broad understanding and knowledge base that we draw on, gained from many years experience with a wide variety of publishers software and related incompatibility issues between them and the MS Operating Systems, to understand the implication of comments made. as was the case when this topic started which you, as you say, never understood in the first place and could not fully relate to with the limited experience.

Where your specialized experience in some areas e.g. BitDefender or some Windows Software and OS's, is helpful, Windows software is however not the be all and end all, as there are other software publishers with better utility software that are used by advanced users and system administrators, which Microsoft sooner or later emulates in one way or another.

Contributing with a specific piece of software like windows defragmenter, and then hogging the topic with it, was not the tenure of the original topic, nor were the general broader comments related to your limited software experience input and your continuing attempts to qualify your comments when they isolated your contribution and issues you contributed, further digressing from the original topic and continuing to fail to understand the broader picture, and I ain't going to explain it to you, as it is obviously a waste of time and more than likely get further off the beaten track.

Thanks for your input anyway.

alexcrist

Since the original issue (missing monitoring settings in advanced mode) has been taken care of in BitDefender 2010 and the rest of the comments in this topic are mostly pointless off-topic (in my opinion), then I'll consider the problem reported here as resolved.

Cris.

== CLOSED (issue solved) ==