Cant Sign On As Administrator On Windows 7 With Ts 2011

Ok, this is weird. Thought to test without uninstalling first and went to safe mode, opened regedit, worked, loaded bdagent.exe, seemed to load fine, tried starting MBAM (free version, no active protection, so doesn't step on BD's toes, just installed it when I actually got a virus once to have another confirmation that it was cleaned) and got a runtime error. Then opened regedit again, expecting it to also fail, only it didn't. But BD did. The moment regedit opened, the BD icon greyed out.

So then I rebooted normally again and apparently now I can once again run stuff elevated. Really no clue what just happened here. So just rebooting didn't do anything, as I did that plenty of times, booting in safe mode and then normally again also didn't, as I tried that before, but booting in safe mode, loading BD there, having it fail after starting an elevated program with it running, then booting normally again fixed it. Any explanations? (@razz: If you're still reading this, could you try something similar and see what happens?)

It still says there are multiple issues if I hover over the icon though.

On the other hand, MBAM gave that same runtime error when I tried starting it even after everything else worked. And it ran just fine just before installing IS 2011, since I tried in between (to rule out a possible infection as the cause of that BD 2010 update mess). But I reinstalled it, got the same errors during the install process, but now it seems to work fine again, after the reinstall was completed.

I have this nasty feeling that BD 2011 tries to hook where it shouldn't?

AHEM! Was told (both my mail and (later) on here) apparently that a conflict MBAM is causing it (even though the conflict shouldn't exist, not having active protection, even if it tries to do something on boot, as you say, an exception should be added to the code to allow it to do so if the issue is known - and besides, it worked just fine alongside BD IS 2010). So (under protest) I uninstalled MBAM, then reinstalled BD (heh, forgot all about CCleaner and partially cleaned the registry by hand, after something like 100 leftover BitDefender entries deleted I just got fed up and hoped it was enough - did run CCleaner after uninstalling BD on the other computer it caused problems on and it found no less than 96 BD entries left to delete - fix your uninstaller people!) and the problem appeared gone.

Well, that was until today's program update. I reboot after it and, what do you know, the problem came right back. Reboot again, the problem no longer exists. Hm, this is interesting, says I, so I reboot a 3rd time and, of course, the problem appears again. 4th reboot and I'm greeted by a blank screen (completely white) for some 15 seconds after the welcome screen vanishes, until my desktop finally appears. Problem gone again, but now it blocked some component of the tuner software loader visibly (I do have very high security settings, but since it didn't block it before...). So I just click allow and assume it'll load. Nope, it didn't load, and neither did Winamp Agent, without even a box saying it was blocked. So on comes reboot #5, with the same thing (can run stuff as admin, but wfwiz.exe and winampa.exe fail to load, without any blocking message). I go and add them myself to exceptions, run them manually to see they now load, then reboot the 6th time and everything seems to finally work right.

All I can say about all this mess is would you kindly FIX IT people!?

Oh, just now I see another program update... Now I wonder why am I wary of installing it, eh?

Meant to send by mail, but leave it here, maybe it'll help others as well...

PS: Speaking of updates, noticed recently a very disturbing change in BD 2011: I have it set to ask before downloading updates, just because program updates often cause issues regardless of version (or at least require reboots - trying to tell it to wait for reboot causes issues even more often, at least that's how it was back when I tried), and so far if I didn't specifically click ok (so if I ignored the window and it vanished on its own after 5 minutes, which is what you'd expect to happen if I'm not at the computer at the time - and that obviously happens a fair bit with a computer that's always on) it assumed I clicked cancel and not update. Well, BD 2011 apparently decides that if I don't specifically click cancel it can go right ahead and update, so I come home, turn on the monitor, sit down and am greeted by BD saying it needs to reboot. Say what??? When did I tell you that you could update???

Noticed the update issue for some time, but didn't mind it since it didn't involve program updates so far... In fact I'd like a setting like that, silent definitions updates (though obviously skipping if they require uninstalled program updates) and ask before program updates, and don't even think of installing them until I tell you to!

Been using BD since 2004 (as I tend to keep mentioning whenever there are issues... unfortunately there ARE issues usually in the first 2 or so months after release and (very interestingly) in the last month before the release of the next version pretty much every single time, and they get no less frustrating) and I really don't think that all this time I just missed the fact that it was updating without me saying OK so far. If the computer was on overnight, when I'd sit in front of it after waking up, if I'd check the time of last update it'd be the time I last approved an update before going to bed (sometimes it'd say on the updates pane that update was canceled, sometimes it wouldn't, but it quite certainly didn't update). Again, don't mind silent definitions updates, in fact wish there'd be a way to make those silent but keep program updates on a tight leash, at least until I'll be sure they won't cause problems, which experience would strongly advise against assuming.

The uninstall with 96 leftover items found by CCleaner was done under safe mode. And since I was told that the problems that appeared on that computer (messed up virus shield and unavailable update module) were due to a bad uninstall of the previous version, I'll say the need to improve the tool is quite significant. Admittedly, I've seen a less effective uninstaller once, though just the one.

I certainly don't want to have more than a single security solution ACTIVE, but can't hurt to have something that could scan lying around, just in case (as on-line scans take forever). As I said before, I installed the free version of MBAM for a "second opinion" when I got a virus a while back for the first time on a computer used just by me in some 10 years (upside of strict security settings), saying that if BD didn't block it in the first place I'd rather have some other AV confirm that it successfully cleaned it later, and then kept it around just in case it'll happen again or to have something to perform a quick scan with in case BD acts up to rule out potential malware being the cause of BD acting up as opposed to just BD bugs.

As for AVC/IDS, I don't mind the alerts (AVC's on high, not critical, by the way - it was on critical in BD 2010 actually), don't mind telling it to allow and remember a program I start the first time I start it and find it handy to tell me what tries to start on its own (not just in case of malware but simply to know what's loading on start-up and such, I'm curious ), and don't have a problem with just telling it to allow and remember the first time that happens either. But blocking something WITHOUT telling me, well, that I DO have a problem with.

(Heh, disabled AVC and IDS completely on the other computer I mentioned, since the person using it would have no idea what to do with any potential alerts and likely'd just block everything...)

Now experience tells that (with the exception of BitDefender 10 (which was a buggy mess start to end that caused an untold number of issues and crashes) and BitDefender 2008 (which was troublesome on Vista till the end, though ran great on XP, in fact on XP it was the only one other than BitDefender 9, which really ran smoothly start-to-end, that didn't cause problems for me shortly after first installing it)) these issues will be ironed out over the next month or so and it'll usually run smoothly until late next summer, when it'll start having issues again, but it'd be a really nice change if in future versions they'd be ironed out BEFORE release...