Bitdefender 10 Review
November 12th, 2006I was very taken with Bitdefender 10 to begin with. I'd used version 9 of their antivirus software for some time and was impressed with its ease of use, so I was eager to try out their full Internet Security Suite.
My first impressions were very positive. I liked the small memory footprint, meaning that the program's processes don't take up too much of my RAM. I also liked that the dialog boxes seemed to be less worrisome than Zone Alarm or Norton Antivirus, and it seems to update itself without troubling me or asking for me to do anything. Nice.
But, and this is a BIG but, I started to notice a lot of problems with my systems. Having bought a license for 2 PCs I installed it onto two systems running Windows XP. Little things started to take forever for no apparent reason.
- Deleting a file would take minutes instead of seconds (and I'm not talking about huge files, I mean tiny files like desktop shortcuts or a notepad file with just a few characters in).
- Looking at other network resources would take ages. It was easier to copy a file off the desktop on my own machine by going into another room and deleting the file via a network share from another PC.
- I also found that I couldn't move files any more. Sure I could copy them, but moving a file from one place to another resulted in two files in two places. Strange.
And the list of little things went on. Eventually I found that I was frequently running with the Antivirus program switched off. This rather defeats the point of having an antivirus program installed!
So I contacted Bitdefender Tech Support. They needed more information so they asked me to run some diagnostic programs and send them the results, which I did and then waited patiently for a reply. It never came. I got back in touch again, this time being told to make some changes to antivirus settings (setting it to scan only programs and to exclude the network paths from the scanner). These settings made no difference. Excluding every network path would be a simple solution, if it would accept a top level share, but it won't. You have to exclude each folder inside the top level share, which is useless if you're talking about for example a share on a colleague's desktop. You can't specifically exclude each folder on their desktop because they're going to be changing all the time. And besides no other antivirus software has ever needed me to do this. If there was a virus on a network resource that I was accessing, it would detect it no problem and without slowing my whole system down in the process.
I didn't bother contacting their tech support again, instead delegating it to Adrian to see if he might have better luck (especially as he has Beta tested for them before and is in touch with their PR department). He didn't. He even got as far as asking for a full refund (after all these problems were going on during their 30 money back refund guarantee period) but no success.
So my conclusions. While Bitdefender 9 is good and I've used it for over a year, Bitdefender 10 seems to me to have some serious problems which the company just don't want to address. Steer clear! Or at very least make sure you try out their free trial version before parting with any cash.
software | anti-virus | reviews | bitdefender
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 12th, 2006 at 6:47 pm and is filed under Software. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Hi there!
November 13th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
[...] Kathie's posted a review of her experiences with BitDefender 10 (this isn't a single PC review - it's based on her experience running BitDefender 10 on to separate PCs): [...]
November 17th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
I work at bitdefender and found your review. I was happy to see that a "normal user" wrote a review about our product. After reading this review I searched for other similar problems on the web, I was somewhat surprised that some other users found the same problems as you did.
I shall try to deal with this problem with my colegues and as soon as we find anything that could help you we will announce you.
If you find anything else that is buggy or bothers you please let me know, here on the blog or on my mail address (however you like).
Sorry for the long post
December 7th, 2006 at 10:03 pm
Wow.. an employee of Bitdefender responding. Florin any update on this?
December 10th, 2006 at 6:45 pm
I had bd 10 plus. would not update. asked for a refund. tried kaspersky, works great.
December 18th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
Haven't heard anything from Kathie yet.
December 18th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
As you read above I've uninstalled the program and asked for a refund. Not that I've received that yet. I'll keep trying ...
December 18th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
I'm very sorry to hear that you have uninstalled the product and I apologize for the inconveniences that Bitdefender caused.
I offered to help because the problems that you had hasn't replicated that often to other users.
If there anything else that I can do for you please let me know.
December 18th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
[...] If you want the background to this story then I suggest that you read what Kathie has written about it (here , here and here ) - the short version of the story is that we installed BitDefender Internet Security 10 on two separate PCs and had similar problems with both (problems which went away upon uninstalling BitDefender Internet Security 10), we contacted tech support and received little feedback (a few requests for more info, requests to tweak settings, that kinda thing) but then the support dried up and emails weren't being replied to. Out last official communication with BitDefender was to ask for a refund. That was weeks ago. No reply. No refund. No resolution. Nothing. [...]
January 10th, 2007 at 1:02 am
I'm having problems with bitdefender myself. Thank god I downloaded the trial version first. I'd like to see if it would work well and it didn't. Fortunately I won't have to go through the hassle of getting a refund.
First, the installation terminated abnormally. I got one of those generic error messages whose meaning nobody knows. Tried again, got another error /warning message halfway through the installation but it looked like it was installed successfully. Worked alright for a couple of days until it downloaded an update last night. My laptop slowed down, and every couple of times that I open outlook, I get a message saying that outlook experienced problems the last time it was closed and would disable bitdefender plug in. I followed instructions to enable the plugin, re-opened outlook and everything seems to work fine.... until I close and re-open outlook again.
I am not sure if the problem is with bitdefender, outlook (or the user
but it's too much to deal with. I will be uninstalling and shopping around for another anti virus. Thank you for posting uninstall instructions!
February 15th, 2007 at 2:50 am
Same results on 3 different PC's. Bitdefender 10 causes random lockups/pauses. Especially it seems when trying to use Firefox web browser. Opening Firefox causes 3 to 5 second pauses, and sometimes just scrolling down a web page cause a three to five second lockup.
When ever the application stops responding, or is slow to open, the Bitdefender File Zone Window indicates heavy file activity. Why this occurs when scrolling down a web page which has already opened I have no idea.
February 23rd, 2007 at 11:59 am
I have the same problem, and I have to power off my laptop every two hours, OMG, what a pity, My laptop. If I found this article before, I would not purchase the BD 10.
February 24th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Thanks. I was just about to buy BitDefender 10 to replace a newly installed Norton IS 2007 that's hogging the processor and won't let me intervene. Now I'll keep looking. Your critique was exactly what I'd been searching in the reviews to find.
March 1st, 2007 at 11:53 am
My decision to download Bit-Defender was based on favorable reviews. This was misleading.BitDefender slowed performance to a snails pace, plus rebooting problems. After one week,I uninstalled BitDefender 10 and returned to AVG-Grisoft. The performance returned to normal.(Windows XP)
March 3rd, 2007 at 5:17 pm
I use Norton Internet Security 2006, which protects against virus infection. When I was infected with a virus I tried their online service, to no avail. I phoned their customer support line at 020 7616 5813 (UK) and was told that I would have to pay £47 to have the virus manually removed by one of their technicians, and that there was no other way of getting rid of the "very dangerous" virus.
I will not renew my subscription to Norton because I refuse to pay for a product, which, when it fails to protect me, puts me in a position where the service provider extorts further funds from me.
Pleas write an article about how Norton promise to protect for the subscription fee, but actually render the contracted service only if one pays them another £47 (or $100) again.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Well, I have to agree, BD 10 slows down the system, regular conversation with their Assistance brings no results. Actually my adsl connection just disappears after some hours of work and only restarting the whole system helps. BD terminates without specific reason, an error file is sent to BD, but they are clueless what the problem can be and would never respond without being asked multiple times (while my email address is included in such communication).
But Norton was much worse, it did not detect a number of infections and it was rather nightmerish to get rid of from my notebook.
cheers, M Szigeti
March 28th, 2007 at 1:45 am
Installed the trial today. Big time problems. Slowed my system to a crawl and then it got so slow I couldn't even uninstall it. The only solution that worked was system restore.............thank God. Still after reading how good this was supposed to be, I contact their tech support. Their response: "sometimes this happens, try installing it again"!!!! Is this a solution??? Very scary experience that I would not recommend to anyone. I don't know how this software gets the great ratings, but stay away!!!!! I'm going back to McAfee
March 30th, 2007 at 1:29 am
Glad I found this thread. I guess I was about to make a big mistake. Had my finger on the purchase button until I came across all this. I had AVG FREE and it failed badly. I accidently downloaded a ActiveX control that infected my system and AVG Free just stood by and watched. Only after I did a manual scan of the system did it find anything, but it could not remove it. So, in a panic, I downloaded CA Security Suite and it disinfected my system, but it was making my system slow down way too much for my taste. Now I've requested a refund for CA and have uninstalled the program. System is nice a quick now, but without an AV program.......was getting ready to DL BD 10....glad I found this first. Now I need to find something that is great, but doesn't slow down my system.
Thanks
Patrick
May 21st, 2007 at 8:45 am
Hi
Read the various threads about BitDefender10plus. Same thing happened to me, Slowed down the system drastically and even the Internet.I tried Norton but unistalled, tried Kaspersky -it crashed the whole system, uninstalled, tried NOD32 - seems to be better than the rest.
May 24th, 2007 at 5:33 am
Hi.
I have been using BitDefender Internet Security 10 for a while ( since the beggining of the year, as a matter of fact). I was quite satisfied with it, although, after reading Kathie comments, I realized dealing with files on my system got really slower. And the system reaaly freezed when bitdefender "decided" to make an update!
But what really annoyed me was the fact the anti-spam feature didn't work with GMail, as it could not scan POP ports different from 110. And when I contacted support, the final answer was that this could not be correct till the next release. Ugh!
Thanks for this enlightning article.
Regards.
Fabio
May 30th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Hi, just installed bitdefender v10 on my Vista..and ever since, the received mail-attachments won't open ..nor can I register them on to the screen or elsewhere..
June 29th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Ugh. Bitdefender ruined it for me. 9 was good. 10 is pathetic.
July 20th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Hi,I am pleased with bitdefender v10 and am sure they will resolve any problems.I have used Mcafee and Norton finding they both set up conflicts in my system trying to uninstall with no trace from either was a nightmare.Bitdefender is the only system i have used on this present p.c I like it
August 18th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Hi guys, I have just read the comments listed here and to be honest, I must be the exception. I bought and installed BitDefender on 2 PC's at home. When I ran it for the first time, I was amased at the number of threats it found, including a trojan and 2 viruses (Norman and CounterSpy previously installed). I don't have any lockup or speed problems and it seems to work fine. I was so impressed with it that I bought it for work (120 PC's and 10 servers). I have been in touch with their tech support guys and to be honest they are very good and have resolved a few 'small' problems with network file access. My systems at work are much faster, seem to crash less and now don't hug as much memory or CPU resources. In all, I am satisfied with BitDefender.
August 30th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
I am purchased BitDefender last September when my Norton Antivirus subscription expired.
Bit Defender caused no noticeable problems until May or June of this year, when it started locking up/freezing my system with its updates while I was on the internet (i.e.- frozen for about 15-20 minutes while the update was downloading and then keeping the windows frozen for 20 minutes or more afterwords, even though I tried using end task to close the internet explorer window). I couldn't even turn off my computer! Several times I have had to turn off the Universal Power Supply to make it stop.
So if I was using the computer for three hours in the evening after work, it would take up almost an hour of my time!!!! No problems the first several months, and now it has turned my damn computer into a plastic and microchip frustration box that won't surf the net!
My subscription to BitDefender expires in a couple of weeks. Fine- I just buy another antivirus program and uninstall BitDefender. But now I'm hearing that its difficult to uninstall the thing! Great- what do I do now? I am not a computer/IT expert. After paying a lump of chump change for my computer, money for DSL, and money for some stupid anti-virus software, my computer is broke and I will probably have to take it into Best Buy or something to get it fixed (and pay upwards of a hundred bucks).
THANKS ALOT BITDEFENDER FOR SCREWING UP MY COMPUTER!
Bonnie
December 20th, 2007 at 8:03 am
I brought BitDefender 2008 Total Security approximately 2 months ago. WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY. Everytime I start the computer the Security package seems to start fine, then after an hour or so bingo 'You have 9 critical errors' none of which are fixable on their 'easy FIX ALL icon' I have to turn off the computer or reboot it to remedy the system only to have it happen an hour later. This becomes rather tiresome after a days work. Yes I have contacted tech support, yes I have sent them temp files, exe files (I should get paid for doing their job) and still it is useless. DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT!!!
December 21st, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Just came across this after I've been trying to figure out why my PC for the past 4 months has been running like a dog with the symptoms noted in the original article and subsequent posts. I've run BitDef for a while both 9 and 10 - no problem with 9 but now I get locks, IE just sits there and so, sorry to say, g/bye Bitdef hello Kaspersky which is in process of d/l.
If it functions as well as its meant to then Bitdef loses my other 3 systems as well.
Really too bad as it's a very good anti virus platform but it's just dragging my system to a halt
January 2nd, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Glad to run across this--although I wish I had year ago when I first installed Bit defender. Anyway my Dell laptop has been very slow for the last year, I thought it was just because it was getting older. Well when my bit defender subscription expired a few weeks ago, I decided to go with another program recommended by Consumer Reports. So I uninstalled Bit Defender, and Bam!!! It was like having a brand new laptop. It doesn't take ten minutes for the computer to start up anymore, or ten minutes just to log onto the internet. Even better, I won't need to start looking for a new computer like I was planning to.
January 15th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
i have bit defender total security 2008 and its crap compered to the bit defender internet security 10, as after the scan is complete the window does not close by its self, preventing it updating, unless i close it,vista& xp) in vista security centre does not see any antispyware protection, as up on install it switches of window defender,also it will not snap its anti spam tool bar into windows mail client as it should, i would not mind but the verry first time installed it everything apart from the antispam toolbar worked fine, as that was the first revision of it since they changed it problems i should not have i want a refund
March 13th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Bitdefender is worse than any virus I have every encountered. I bought in last week, eagerly installed it having spent hours scrupulously ensuring no Norton Files were still on my machine and the second one I was installing it to. Rebooted, neither have worked since. Bitdefender stopped taking my support calls at 2.13am on the Sunday morning, having been trying to save my laptops since 2.45pm the Saturday afternoon.
Their support people kept trying to say they'd send me an email with an uninstall tool, despite the fact that I couldn't access anything, let alone mail, and no drives were being recognised at all. 2 laptops ready for the bin.
Do not touch with a barge pole!
March 13th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Thanks for your comments Karen. I guess you have web access now. You can download the uninstall tool if you haven't done so already.
I hope your laptop installations are recoverable. Are you really planning to throw them out? The hardware won't be affected. Your data may well still be on the drives (depending on what's actually happened - from the sound of it the installation hosed the Master File Table on the drives). Can you get into Windows at all? Have you tried going into safe mode? At the very worst if you have a recovery disk that came with your laptop (or a windows installation disk) you should be able to reinstall to get your laptops working again. Don't give up!
Little comfort though really. Keep on at their Tech Support!!
April 10th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Wow, I'm glad I decided to double-check the reviews on bit defender. I was just about to put my credit card number in, yikes! I online game, so I was interested in the gaming mode. Would you be able to recommend an antivirus software that is effective and runs somewhat 'lean' when it comes to taking up system resources? Thanks for the help and for the reviews.
April 17th, 2008 at 6:54 am
Bitdefender 10 slowed my system and caused other problems. The final straw was when I realized that it was deleting system restore points. I uninstalled it; switched to a very popular free antivirus program, and all has been well. As mentioned previously, it required a bit of a hunt to find all remnants of the program left behind after running the uninstall. Good riddance though!
April 17th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
I'm have second thoughts about bd being the best. My bd antivirus plus v10 just refuses to up date. Instead i get messages such as update error or unable to conect to server. HELP PLEASE!
April 18th, 2008 at 12:27 am
same problem here with bitdefender slowing down my pc. it's a shame because i wanted to buy, but i'm glad the trial showed me this problem. random lockups/laggy pc response are totally unacceptable. problems disappeared after uninstalling.
May 1st, 2008 at 9:32 am
After installing Bitdefender internet security 2008, my brand new computer crashed. I rang the telephone support number and was told that "no one else has complained" and was also told that it must be my comptuter. I paid for someone to 'fix' my computer. They uninstalled Bitdefender and it works fine now. A waste of money. I never got any refund. Stay away from Bitdefender.
May 6th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
I purchased a three seat license for BD Internet Security 2008 today. After installing it on a single laptop, I found that I could no longer access my NAS via network shares.
I was able to contact BD Technical Support; they are working on identifying the problem and hopefully a solution to this problem. (I also submitted PC/Network information via their diagnostic tool.)
I will post back any solutions that are shared, as well as getting a refund (which I am entitled to) if BD Internet Security 2008 product cannot be made to work with my LAN.
May 10th, 2008 at 4:38 am
I requested my refund today under the 30-Day Money Back Guarantee, as two technical support engineers were unable to resolve the problem with BD blocking access to my network shares.
I cannot afford to lose network access for this amount of time from this one PC, nor can I invest more time (now about 4-5 hours) helping tech support run diagnostics and troubleshoot what is an obvious problem with BD. Time to cut losses and move on.
On the advice of a former poster to this blog, I loaded Kaspersky Internet Security v7 and I am able to access my NAS via by network share, as usual. Nice package; will see how the trial performs before I purchase this time
I also found that TrendMicro Internet Security 2008 works fine (though it does not recover gracefully if/when WinXP crashes or suffers it's usual memory leaks. TM attempts a "cleanup" process, which consumes much in the way of CPU and I/O cycles, thus making the PC slow.)
May 13th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Customer service processed my refund today for BD Internet Security 2008. My refund request was managed in a timely fashion, so I will consider BD products in the future.
Installed Kaspersky Internet Security v7 on a second PC as the initial install has performed well thus far. The 30-day trial period program enabled me to install the software and acquire a trial license key all in one step. I would recommend Kaspersky for users that have multiple PCs on a LAN with a NAS. The dashboard is well designed making it quick and easy to configure the software once it is installed.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:37 am
I have these same problems, I hate to think I wasted my money on Bit Defender, but I did. It really slows down Outlook and Internet Explorer, other side effects since I installed it are simle .txt files that take a long time to opon, excel spreadsheets that are not very big--kind of sit there a while before opening. Very disappointing. I guess I will go Back to microtrend.
I have been watching these and other posts about Bit Defender for about 5 months, now, and they clearly are not interested in helping out with it. So, they will never see another dime from me, and I have told 4 friends so far about it, and--well, the grapevine works. I wonder how much ZDnet was paid to give them a good review.
May 28th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
same here. I have it installed on three separate computers and it most definitely slows down system. I have it installed on both XP and vista machines and I have the same problem on both. I too bought this program because of favorable reviews but man are they wrong.
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Five days on and BD help desk have not answered any of my 6 follow-up emails. I upgraded to V10 to BD2008 acouple of weeks ago, it seems the up date changed the Fire Wall setting to "gaming" - I don't "game". Zob Trojan got in and all of a sudden I have 5 programs in there popping up threat warnings and exhorting me to buy a "cleaner". My desk-top background changed the a bright red "bio-hazard" logo. I can nolonger access "my computer" or any of the programs and Task Manager has been disabled. The computer takes up to 30 minutes to boot. Like others I have never been able to get BD to understand the difference between my "white list" and the "black list" random emails get dumped, identical test emails from the same sender are sorted into the In Box and the Dlete File.. hahah. What a joke. I say - beware of the Gypsies of Bucharest. I ran a full scan with BD and it came up with a total clean result. I then downloaded a Norton program and this showed 16 Major Trojans and over 100 various virus, I got another trial from a different source and it came up with the same 16 Majors and within two of the other listed viruses. Goodbye BitDefender, I have wasted a two year contract. hahah did I say "contract" - doesn't that imply aat least two parties, well folks I feel like a very alone operator here. Any repsonses would be appreciated to my hotmail address barry_marx@hotmail.com
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Goodness me, I thought this product was really good. I am an affiliate marketer and was looking for a really nice product to sell, I was about to feature this product on my review site but I dont think I will both now!
I know I Norton is pretty much market lead, but what a beast when it comes to resource allocation! Zone Alarms is better, but I have also found it swallows up resources and causes slow boot up / shut downs. Sigh!
Anyone care to share opinions / suggestions on a reliable antivirus / security application?
Stuart
<!-- email deleted -->
January 11th, 2009 at 12:12 am
In Holland we have a saying "Laughing like a farmer with a toothache". That's how I feel right now, reading all this. I also suckered into buying Bitdefender 2009 TS, because of a couple of favourable reviews such as on ZDNet and PCWorld and some others.
I run it on three PC's, two of which without "trouble" (see *), one a complete mess. Random lockups and slowdowns, most of the time an insane amount of network scanning. Right after install, Windows required reactivation, I had to reroute Network Drives, and the list goes on and on. Version 2008 is causing similar (although less) problems.
*Both version 2008 and 2009 seem to be unable to update themself if the window showing the scan results is not closed, which happens frequently in my always-on fileserver. Also, Bitdefender is unable to scan password-protected RAR files: it just freezes up completely.
I've been in contact with chat support for hours. For each problem they ask me to send them reports generated by their diagnostic tools, and that's that. You will never hear from them again. Today (after three months of frustration) I've decided to get rid of this horrible piece of cr@p and go with something else. I will try for a refund, but expect to get nothing but a deafening silence.
WARNING: STEER CLEAR OF THIS PRODUCT!
January 19th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
What disappointed me the most about Bitdefender's trail was the extremely poor customer service & the fact that I was unable to uinstall the software, without having to download there uinstall tool. I sent two emails to there "technical support department" about this issue, only I did not get one reply. I then eventually tracked down there UK customer service number on Google as I could not find it on there website & called there customer service department. After waiting for nearly 20 minutes to be spoken to (WHEN IT SAY'S ON THERE WEBSITE NO WAITING TIME ON THE PHONES) I explained my problem only to have no appologees at all. Would I use Bitdefender antivirus software on my computer quite simply NO!
February 20th, 2009 at 12:47 am
Bit defender is the worst I ever dealt with. 3 E-mails and forget the chat line they don't even answer you! Stupid me should have tried the trial. I am cancelling and hope I have no problem. I am shocked that this is rated so high. Your reviews are right on.
March 9th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Stuart,
Check out Norton Internet Security 2009. It is much, much faster and not resource hogging. Back in 2005/2006 it was a huge resource hog and had problems. They have made some drastic changes since then. Most of the time it is using 0% of my resources. It also scans during idle times and does what it calls pulse updates which checks for updates every few minutes and then streams new updates in between full updates. You wouldn't know it was running unless you had the interface up to see it happening. It doesn't bog down like in the old days when I would end up turning it off and then running the live update each day myself.
The only issue I have had with slowing is when I had privacy control turned on. I have upload of 5mbps with powerboost (often between 8 - 9 mbps) and it slowed it to between 1-3mbps. Download has never been affected. Norton was scanning for specific information that I defined as not wanting to send to other computers, such as my social securtiy number. I just turn it off when I want to upload a lot of files via ftp. Most people wouldn't notice this. I only discovered it because I was doing a lot of testing after upgrading to a higher connection through cable company and got a new DOCSIS 3.0 modem.
I believe Norton has a free trial on their website if you want to check it out.
March 17th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
bitdefender sucks period!
March 25th, 2009 at 4:41 am
Sorry for my email address only had five minutes whe I first made it years ago..
Anyway Bitdefender sucks! resources, the support is so lacking if even really there either that or its so overwhelmed with complaints that it takes months to get a reply...the only positive thing, the interface is nice and simple. But 10 mins to open a empty word file...come on guys where was the quality control.., I'm not savy enugh to know exactly what goes into anivirii code, but I do no there's something funny going on here.
I use the free version, Bitdefender 10 free my boss actually reccomended it, as supposedly one of the top 10 free antivrii apps. I'm wondering if Bitdefender didnt sponser the ranking system or delivery a cut down version for review?/..because it really diserves at least a good honest -3 out of 10 for performance. I detest bitdefender it so slow..someone please write a virus that kills it so no one will supports this app. Its stunningly lackluster performance has swayed me from purchasing the full version..I'm glad i didnt cough up the coinage to purchase the Fulll bitdefender paid for version.
I'mgoing back to AVG and Spybot..they work and guess what my system hardly takes a hit from them..also I have more malware get through and affect systems than with the two apps I've just mentioned..I might even donate the same monies as it would cost for bitdender to these guy's because they really deserve it more...I'm dissapointed in other words to put it politely with bitdefender it is a very poor anti-malware software..do not purchase do not install stay away...In the words of Dr Who's Darleks exterminate..exterminate...
One of the most dangerous creatures, in todays modern world, is a tired bored geek.
April 9th, 2009 at 6:26 am
this is a real piece of @#$, the first bitdefenders, antivirus 8, v10 plus where the best so the last two 2008 and 2009 ALL of them its a waist of time money and will make you have very bad and anger moments, how it hurts me to have paid those 49 dollars thats wy thew lose millions because people crack them or preffer free AVs solutions. and the thecnical support its even WORSE!!!, each representative works by itselft and you have to tell them your problem again and again and again and nobody fixt it.
April 14th, 2009 at 2:43 am
i purchased bitdefender from amazon.com aboout 3 weeks ago, it worked fine and i registered by signing in to my account and added total security 2009 with the key. fine now another week went by, now i am having problems. a box pops up 6 times or more stating that 'bitdefender cannot continue update because you don't have an account'. actually i do have an account.
i emailed tech support 3 times and customer service 2 times with-in a 2 week span and a generated mail gets sent saying 'i will be contacted with- in 24 hours and i am still waiting a week and a half., no answer, i even can't find their phone #.
since it has been a month and 4 days, i cannot return bitdefender at all.
and PC is very slow., what took about 40 seconds to 1 minute now takes 5 to 12 minutes. clicking on email takes 2 minutes to respond.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Wow some real venom on here for Bitdefender.
I use Bitdefender Total Security 2009 and have had no issues with it, I have found it doesn't use lots of system resources at all but I do know how to configure my AV to suit my machine.
Bitdefender is constantly at the top of the AV rankings which is why I picked it and when all is said and done that is why we pick AV.
why don't you use NOD that has low systems resources, but it would as it doesn't scan the majority of the files on your machine, don't even get me started on AVG or Kaspersky - you may as well buy a paperweight.
May 20th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
I also have BitDefender Total Security 2009, and it slows my computer down something awful. I will have no other choice but to delete it and go with another product.
May 22nd, 2009 at 3:58 am
BDIS2009-Problems registering account, network and file activity did not work, couldn't add my computer to it's own network!....PC crashed unless i disabled BDIS2009. Customer support left a lot to be desired, no phone number only online help with not very technical techs. Refund and got rid of, next time i try before i buy. Gone with Kaspersky...no problems at all.
June 25th, 2009 at 4:59 am
I purchased bitdefender, Internet Security 2009 and it sucks. Don't buy it! It does not work with Gmail and I continually received error that I have not scanned for malware for 10 days even though auto-scan is set to run every 3 days. This product is the worst software I have ever purchased in my life. Stay away!!!
July 18th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Yeah, I had shocking experiences with bitdefender 10 also. I now run with iolo system mechanic, and find it very good.
August 9th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
This product works well on my PC but not so much on my laptop. I haven't figured out it yet but it might suite best if I just return the product, I haven't found a source for troubleshooting this software and as I said it runs ridiculously slow on my laptop, I too suffer from the minutes of deleting small files and streaming videos. Although it does not seem the program is bias against laptop or PC seems like most of you have PC's and the problems occur. Odd.
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:31 am
I too, was having problems with BD10 in killing internet access in my FF and IE browsers. Here's what I did to get mine working (so far...)
On the initial installation, I too had a failed install. I rebooted, ran the install again, this time successfully. After a few FF requests I noticed that the pages were pulling up ever more slowly until the point came where no page would pull up. I ran the repair tool available from Start => Programs => Bitdefender => Repair/Uninstall. After another reboot, BD reinstalled itself again (as it was supposed to do.) Opened FF- still no joy.
I opened up a command line prompt and ran a ping to my local workplace server. Pings timed out. I then ran a tracert to find where traffic was dying and ascertained that I was sending traffic successfully to my workplace server, it was dying as it got to my computer, pretty much proving that a component in BD was killing incoming traffic.
I right-clicked the BD icon in the active program tray and opened Basic Settings. Once there, I disabled all Security Settings. Opened FF and sure enough my browser was now functioning. I then began enabling the Security Settings one by one, closing and opening FF after each change until I hit the Firewall enable. It was there where my FF quit working. Unchecking the Firewall still did not bring back my internet access until I unchecked all of the settings again rebooted, and enabled all settings once more (with the exception of the Firewall and Parental control- the later, my choice). I now have functional browsers again with BD active.
A byproduct of the above seems to have improved the vsserv service under BD. Where it was running in the 60-70% CPU total utilization before, it now runs 20-30% .
While this may may not work for everyone (no workaround fixes everyone), I offer my testing for you to try.