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Bad BitDefender Update Clobbers Windows PCs
alphadogg writes "Users of the BitDefender antivirus software started flooding the company's support forums Saturday, apparently after a faulty antivirus update caused 64-bit Windows machines to stop working. The company acknowledged the issue in a note explaining the problem. 'Due to a recent update it is possible that BitDefender detects several Windows and BitDefender files as infected with Trojan.FakeAlert.5,' the company said. The acknowledgment came after BitDefender users had logged hundreds of posts on the topic. Some complained of being unable to reboot their systems."
Valid files detected as "FakeAlert"? Wow, irony DOES go a long way.
Its a new security paradigm. The newly locked down computer will not run anything, and therefore no virii, malware, bots, or solitaire, will run. Truly they've created the "most secure antivirus ever".
Or maybe they should have put up a payment screen on their site, "We're sorry, your antivirus subscription has expired. To prevent your computer from being exposed to malware and virii, we have taken the proactive step of disabling your computer until you have made payment. For the low renewal fee plus a small reactivation fee of $199, we will be happy to walk you through the re-enablement process. Have a nice secure day!"
you would think they would at least test updates on a few different systems (including the 64 bit systems) before releasing it to customers
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
This happened to me, too... bitdefender would flag nearly any file, and it first flagged a file that I had just updated, so I was genuinely concerned. The next file is flagged, however, was usbstor.sys, so I knew the AV was probably wrong.
Some people were running virus scans... tens of thousands of false detection, and all of the files were quarantined or deleted... it was a really bad situation for many. I'm not sure how non-technical users fared.
I use bitdefender on my computer only - I like the aggressive detection capabilities and reporting options. However, no one else in my house wants to know what their AV is doing - they just want it to work - and bitdefender is probably the worst option for them.
That is why I use and would recommend Comodo Time Machine as it gives you a nice little screen before boot where you just hit the home key and can restore your machine from snapshot before the little boo boo. And if the Bitdefender burn has turned you off of them I would try Comodo AV/Firewall from the same company. Both are free, no nags or need to register, and I have been running it on both 32 and 64 bit XP and Windows 7.
Note-not affiliated with the company, just a humble PC repairman that has tried just about every AV and security software out there and found Comodo to be the best all around. I have been running them on XP X64 for a couple of years now and never had any show stoppers like this. In fact the only problem I've ever seen with a Comodo product is you can't run Time Machine in a dual boot with Windows 7 and XP because 7 changes drive letters, but even then there wasn't any hangup or problems, it simply wouldn't install.
But if your machine is running a single OS Time Machine can keep problems like TFA from happening. I have had family members bork their machines beyond booting and with Time Machine I was able to walk them through restoring from snapshot in under 15 minutes. hell of a lot better than a multi-hour reinstall.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Thats the motto of my life my friend.
One of the things that precipitated my move to Linux was the way Kaspersky -- at the time, the top-rated security suite -- was shutting down my LAN. There were lots of posts on the official forums complaining about the problem, a handful of useless responses from users guessing at which part of the suite might be the source of the problem, and about which of the undocumented menu options might disable that part of the suite, and one short, incomprehensible message from one of the developers, suggesting they were looking into the problem, from several months before.
My experience with security software for Windows is that they bog down the operating system, disable basic features of the operating system without warning, and cause frequent crashes -- the very problems that they warn malicious software may cause. Simply put, malicious software *may* cause problems for Windows, but most third-party security software *will*.
To Microsoft's credit, they finally sealed some of the fundamental security holes with Vista and Windows 7, and they offer a decent security suite for free, so there's really no longer any reason to buy one of these wretched third-party security suites.
On the whole, though, you'll still get better security by switching to Linux, or at least Mac OS X.