Bitdefender

[floppybootstomp]

After noting Mucks' comment about 'MSE is getting long in the tooth' I uninstalled MSE and installed Bitdefender, the free version.

One question: How do you manually perform a scan?

Other observations:

a) Only scan option I can see is 'auto' and I do not like things going on in the background I have no control over so I turned it off. Does this mean my OS install will never be scanned for nasties?

b) Each time I open the BD program I get taken to a site that wants me to activate a whole bunch of other crap.

c) I had to register with BD otherwise it would turn off in 30 days time. They now have details of my Facebook account and my email address.

d) How do I know if BD is actually doing anything?

MSE seemed fine to me but I thought I'd try the latest craze. Smooth interface, gotta say, lovely GUI, but that means not a thing.

In short, I prefer to control my apps, not be taken over and forcibly guided so I don't think I'll be staying with this thing.

Which are also the reasons I don't like Chrome, tried that also recently, couldn't figure it out tbh, more difficult to navigate than IE imo.

One final thing to say in this here Mr Grumpy post: The latest version of the Opera Browser (V25 or thereabouts) won't let you import your old Opera bookmarks - how stoopid is that? So I went back to V12 or so and now all is good in Mr Flops' Opera browser for, erm, well - browsing.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Ok, done a little searching and it seems there is no option to scan manually in the free version but this option is available if you want to spend money.

So, the only way I can scan is turn on auto scan (where I can't see what's happening) or right click a folder or file for an individual scan.

The hell with that, I'm going back to MSE (why do I keep thinking of that Pink Floyd album 'Animals'? Oh, I know, there's a track on it called 'sheep' )

 

[TriplexDread]

I have disabled it for now.It was causing hell with my downloads

Every single item that was downloaded was being scanned. It was causing havoc.
At time my entire system was coming to a halt, I was having to wait 2minutes at times before I got any kind of response even tabbing to system manager was an issue. Window freezes, No response from keyboard and mouse

Many more other issues as well according to a Google search

With my spec, not the kind of thing I take kindly too

 

[muckshifter]

... right-click the little icon in your taskbar, and choose a 'full system scan' ...

... right-click the little icon in your taskbar, and choose 'show'

I have no problems or any qualms in letting BD do it's thing in the background ... I certainly have never had a 'problem' with it interfering with anything I download and non with my MMO games I play.


Each to there own.

 

[muckshifter]

PS, I have it on me phone too.

 

[Taffycat]

I have been using BD for several months now, also as a replacement for MSE. (Same reasons as you, Sir Flopps.)

The sign-up was easy enough for me - no Facebook account, so just name, e-mail. If I want to scan something manually (such as a download, for example) I just right click it and choose "Scan with BD" which it then does.

If I want BD to carry out a full system scan, I right click the icon in the notification area (or whatever it's currently called... the bit near the clock! lol) Right clicking gives me the option to select "Full System Scan."

I have never had any probs with it when downloading. No system freezes, or lack of response, etc. Just my own experience, of course.

It seems to work pretty well in the background. On a couple of occasions, when I've clicked on a link (from a news website usually) BD has stopped me, with a message that the site is "unsafe." As I mentioned, this has only happened about twice.

Generally speaking, this user has been pretty happy with it. Certainly when I compare it to the prog which came with hubby's new PC a few months back. That particular AV is a pain. It was possible to use it on up to 4 devices... but I wouldn't allow it anywhere near my PC. The registration for that, practically wanted an X-Ray of one's inner workings! (Er... I exaggerate, of course, but it was terribly intrusive and the T&Cs were enough to give me the galloping heebie-jeebies.)

Edit: Ooops, sorry Mucks, was writing this as you posted

 

[floppybootstomp]

... right-click the little icon in your taskbar, and choose a 'full system scan' ...

... right-click the little icon in your taskbar, and choose 'show'

I have no problems or any qualms in letting BD do it's thing in the background ... I certainly have never had a 'problem' with it interfering with anything I download and non with my MMO games I play.


Each to there own.

Ok, I done that, it appears to be scanning, or at least in the small window that shows when I select 'show' there's a constantly changing line of text showing different locations on my hard drives. I suppose that's what they mean by non-intrusive eh?

Thanks for supplying the information Mr Mucks, but I couldn't find that info anywhere from the software supplier, perhaps I didn't look hard enough but I do like my apps to be easy to use and helpful and judging by the amount of queries from other BD users that a Google search threw up I am not alone in missing how to perform a full scan.

I will eat a modest helping of humble pie (only a modest helping because I don't consider myself a total dufus to have missed how to scan) and give it a fair chance for a couple of weeks. No problems visiting any web sites so far but it's early days, I haven't downloaded anything since install.

And also thanks to TC for info supplied.

 

[muckshifter]

I used to play Eve, actually redownloading a 21day trial ... anyway, in Eve if you wanted to know how to do something, you right-clicked. That habit has kinda stuck, I play a lot of MMOs.

but you are correct, it's a well hidden feature ...

I like it 'cos it has never been inmyface.

 

[Anon_F]

BD good but Kaspersky will get my money next time.
BD had bad reviews recently & Kaspersky is getting better ratings.

 

[floppybootstomp]

BD good but Kaspersky will get my money next time.
BD had bad reviews recently & Kaspersky is getting better ratings.

Links?

The only bad reviews I can find for BD is from users on CNET, the majority of reviews are favourable.

I've never paid for AV or anti-malware software and haven't suffered any nasties fror about eight years now.

Some folk truly believe throwing money at something makes it better. Ho hum.

This is not me favouring BD, just me having a neutral observation.

 

[Anon_F]

Current edition of computer active, other pc magazines are available.

 

[EvanDavis]

I've gone back to MSE. I have a bunch of unattended ISO's in Dropbox and as much as I tell BD not to scan them. BD keeps scanning them and giving me warnings.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Well, that's it. I gave Bitdefender a fair crack of the whip but it's not for me. Why?

I had a 2Tb hard disk become spare so I decided to replace the 1Tb hard disk on my main machine labelled 'Data' with the 2Tb disk. Put the new disk in the external caddy and started to copy the data over, it totalled just short of 500Gb.

Every now and again the copy process would stop with a pop up window telling me something about a 'gzquar' file. This happened such a lot that the copy process took about six hours, three times longer than expected. I looked up gzquar files on Google and noted that these were quarantined Bitdefender files.

So I looked for what Bitdefender had done and this wasn't easy, imo this software has a very unintuitive interface, very difficult to navigate. When I did find what Bitdefender had been up to I found out it had quarantined several of those 'No CD' files that I used some time ago so I didn't have to have a disk in the drive when playing some games, TOCA2 & Giants were two examples, no longer used but just stored on my 'Data' disk.

More worringly Bitdefender had taken it upon itself to quarantine several *.exe files from GOG (Good Old Games) directories, thus rendering three games unplayable, Rayman 2 was one of these.

If there's one thing that riles me it's software doing stuff without permission, as far as I'm concerned that's almost as bad as a virus in itself. Bitdefender is guilty as charged, imo, of being intrusive, overbearing and difficult to navigate.

So it's gone. Or so I think, I haven't checked the registry yet.

MSE is back in place now, I feel comfortable with it. I'm not a great fan of Microsoft's practices but at least with MSE they have made something that fulfills my own criteria.

I gave Bitdefender a fair shot but in my honest opinion it's too intrusive.

 

[muckshifter]

Now, that's a bit of an eye opener, and I too would be un-installing BD ... not at the moment tho'

There is a cravat, however, you do know that MSE, by Microsoft's own admission, is now a "bottom of the pack" AV program and Microsoft actually advise people to use an alternative. (cited 2013)

It's not cost effective any more, I strongly advise any one who uses MSE to seek an alternative AV program. You get what you pay for!






Just to be sure here, I am in no way trying to defend Bitdefender, just pointing out a hole in MSEs defences here.