Especially so, because if you downloaded and installed Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon Edition yesterday, it would've been a modified version with a bad backdoor built in: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2994

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Oh, nice. Thanks for that Jord.
I went to 17.2 late last year, without much intention of going further for a while. Just as well.

I got down to choosing between Kaspersky and Bitdefender.

Kaspersky's full system scan took 3 hours and still had not done just my C: drive. So that's when I uninstalled it and tried Bitdefender. The few times that it worked before I had to reboot, it did full system scans in mere minutes.

It really is a speedy bugger, as it uses all the CPU cores to do the scan, and not even fully load them. It's also got protection against ransomware, the newest scare on the block.

When I checked the 'test for 30 days' option I also came across their 'secret' advert: buy 3PC/2year license for the price of 1 year, so it cost me €39,95 instead of €69,95.

And considering that on two systems I'd run with Windows 7 Windows Defender for the past 2 months (aka nothing), it was time I put something back on.

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Administrator password reset: check.
Extra account removed: check.
Turn hibernation off: check.
Check installation key: check.
Backing up all registry: check.
Backing up Pale Moon profile: check.
Downloaded new video drivers: check.
Downloaded new NIC drivers: check.
New motherboard chipset drivers: check.
No new audio drivers, old ones still available: check.

Will do a Windows repair install without updates, hope to be back in 45 minutes.

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It is taking a little longer, copying 4 million files and settings...

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Left at 3.30pm to go do some sporting, came back at 5.30pm to find everything installed. Some 500 updates waiting for me. Including all those Windows 10 updates.

But so far everything works, is speedy, fresh.
Although my language is set to Dutch, will have to adjust that later on.

First going to install all drivers again. Laters. :)

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Been fighting Bitdefender's Helpdesk the past couple of days. I bought a 2 year, 3 PC license for AntiVirus Plus 2016, which works fine on two systems but which manages to crash my Windows shell just moments after logging in. Meaning that my desktop is totally black, and although I can start Task Manager (using CTRL+ALT+DEL) and see that AVP starts, I cannot see anything else, or click on anything, or do much of anything with Windows.

So Bitdefender HD said it was due to me having installed Superantispyware, Sophos anti-rootkit and Malwarebytes Anti-malware. I have those installed on my other two systems as well, and there they have no problem with AVP, so I know already that ain't the problem.

But diligently, I uninstalled all the other programs, rebooted, installed AVP, rebooted aaaaaannnnnddddd... black screens. Can only reboot, into safe mode, uninstall AVP, reboot and Windows works again.

Now, if that ain't a problem with AVP, then I don't know what clue one must have... Bitdefender HD says, we don't believe all other security programs are off your system, send a new supporttool 7zip file in so we can check. AVP cannot work together with other security programs. Can anyone spell out BS?

So... today I installed Kaspersky, just to see. It works, I can reboot, I can get back into Windows. Uhm. The only niggle it has is when I deactivate e-mail protection, I get a warning that that is bad. But I don't have any e-mail programs installed...

Have given Bitdefender until Friday to get their act together and give real help, instead of blaming other programs. They sound like the Microsoft Windows 10 helpdesk who blame other programs for things going haywire in Windows. If not fixed, I want my money back and we'll move to Kaspersky on all systems.

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Bitdefender HD says, we don't believe all other security programs are off your system, send a new supporttool 7zip file in so we can check.

They might be correct.

They're talking BS.
1. Superantispyware and Malwarebytes Anti-malware are installed on the other two systems as well. There no problems.
2. Bitdefender starts normally on the system with the crashing explorer.exe, it is about the only program that starts normally.
3. What kind of security protocol should crash the Windows shell of any user in order for you to uninstall other programs? What's the use of annoying your client so much to do so?
4. Why continue to hammer onto that, when there's nothing on here anymore?
5. And this is via a helpdesk that sends one email a day. One per 24 hours, if that. Only workdays, as the one I had to do with all weekend was of Thursday!
6. To get into contact with their helpdesk, you require the use of Internet Explorer, as none of the other browsers (including mainstream Firefox and Chrome) are capable of getting the initial form to work. With those browsers you're in a continuous loop of choosing your package and what help you want, then choose your package and what help you want, then choose your package and what help you want. That's service!

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Yup, and no answer of them today. Not interesting enough.

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End of the line is that I bought a two year, one PC license from Kaspersky to have on this system. Bitdefender tried with a whole new uninstall tool, but in the end the outcome was the same.

So if Kaspersky works, why do difficult?

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Avast Free, AVG free

These two plus Avira Free don't do much viral hunting, but more look into your system what you do with it and what you install and sell that to advertisement companies so they can spam you with it.

Spybot doesn't do any hunting, just blocking (and via the registry these days, which can make for pretty large&bloated registries, no fun if you want a speedy Windows).
Malwarebytes checks only for malware, not for virii.

On the up-side of my wobbling Windows, I managed to get the 'open with' right-click function fixed. Despite various registry add-ons via Sevenforums, I finally managed to fix it by adding it manually to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers

7-Zip still doesn't show up here, though. No matter what I do.
Also still have trouble with all kinds of options I had on right-clicking executables.

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7-Zip still doesn't show up here, though. No matter what I do.

I find that I have to go through the 'Open with', 'Choose default program', 'Browse', 7zFM.exe, route to get 7z files to open properly, with every new 7-zip install. But that doesn't help you with the 7-Zip fly-out context menu (though I can perhaps dig out the registry values, if that would help).

For 7-zip I already tried to go through its GUI's Tools->Options->7-ZIP and check the options I want for the context menus. As the machine's administrator of course, because with your own account -even if that's an administrator- that doesn't work.

But even that doesn't give me the options to "Open archive", "Extract here" and "Add to archive". Same thing with TortoiseGit, I can install it and try to get its context menu items, but they won't show in the right-click.

It's as if I miss part of the right-click menu, where these entries are entered.
And aside from resetting my registry to default (aka 2009), and option I don't want to follow, I'm hoping for a miracle and that I can fix it manually.

On directories I have "Share with", "Include in library" and "Send to", but no other cascading menu that opens to the left or right. On zip files I do have the "Open with->7 zip manager" option. Checking the registry though I saw I didn't even have a ".7z" extension registered, so really something not well here.

Executables, where I previously had the option to add these to an archive, I now no longer have that. And am trying to find where in the context menu that sits, and what else may be under that, that I may miss, so I can fix that part of the context menu.

Comparing registry entries would be nice. When I know which ones to check in on.

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Funny guys at Bitdefender. Both of the systems that still run Bitdefender AVP16 have run into the problem that part of the icon cache is damaged and that several programs sit with a broken icon. Ironically this includes the Bitdefender icon.

We've managed to downplay it so far that it's caused by the Ransomware prevention module in AVP16. Turn off the module and we can repair the icons, turn it back on and the icons break again.

So here I went and emailed Bitdefender about it.
In the mean time I also emailed them about the problem that the Stop button on the Update process doesn't work when AVP16 runs in Auto-pilot mode. I would expect I would still be able to stop it from doing an update, but no, it ignores everything I do. As if I am a virus.

Disabling Auto-pilot all works without a flaw. Pressing Stop stops the update process within a minute. Just as you would think a stop button would work.

Bitdefender replied with their support tool, could I use that to send them all the innards of the machine and a description of my problem(s). Did that and got their standardized answer back: I have Malwarebytes and Superantispyware installed on one of these systems. I should know by now that those are a big no-no. I should uninstall these and then try again.

Stupid default help script over there.
As if Superantispyware and Malwarebytes prohibit Bitdefender on Autopilot from reading if the user clocks on the Stop button. And that they don't do so when Auto-pilot isn't on.

What kind of volatile combination do they become that they break stuff like this? I still haven't had an answer from them how they thought the combo killed explorer.exe on my system, a thing that Kaspersky still hasn't done. I haven't had any problems yet with Kaspersky. Weird.

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In other news, got word today that the company that should take back my NAS and replace my broken hard drives is finally looking at my complaint. This after I had given them 2 more weeks to come to a solution 2 weeks ago in a registered letter to them.

During the two weeks we didn't hear a thing.
So today I emailed the complaints and disputes office they're assigned to, who have immediately ordered this company to take action. I've just heard that the company is now looking into my complaint. Whatever that means.

All I want is for the NAS to be returned to Shuttle for them to fix it, and for my 2 broken hard drives to be replaced as under warranty.

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Hallelujah! Praise your favorite deity!
The Shuttle NAS and both the WD drives (the dead one and the one with read problems) have been returned to the reseller, who's going to see what they can do about things.

Past Wednesday I emailed the reseller as of course I hadn't heard of them since last Wednesday. Asked for a status update on my complaint. Got an email back within 2 minutes that my complaint was valid and that they would send the RMA numbers to me soon. Which they did the next day, 3 RMA numbers, one for each HDD, one for the NAS.

I immediately bought a new HDD for our array, as I was already foreseeing that this wasn't going to be a simple swap of hardware, defunct out, new in. The new drive came in today, so I hot-swapped the WD out and put this new Seagate in (same model as the other two). The array is now rebuilding itself. Will take approx. 24 hours.

At least when the resellers gets my things back, I may have a second NAS plus two new or refurbished HDDs. At least the second NAS would give us options for backing up. And then turn it off when not in use.

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And so today the doorbell rang. I opened, and a postman delivered two packages, one large one small, both addressed to Holly. She said she hadn't ordered anything though.

So like on Christmas morning we opened the packages.
The small one held a 4TB WD Blue drive.
The larger one held our Shuttle OmniNAS KD20 (serial number fits the old one), its cables and power supply and another small package.
The second small package held a 5TB WD Black drive.

Wow.

Although there's totally no explanation on what happened with the NAS! We can understand that the two drives are new, because we turned in 2x 4TB WD Green drives and got a 4TB Blue and 5TB Black back.

Edit: I found the details on what they did with the NAS, it was hidden behind the address label. They've tested the fan and found it failed, and replaced that. They also tested the power button LED and found it failed, so replaced that as well. Good thing I can read German as the whole testform was in that language. :)

I've added the Blue to the RAID5 array in the NAS, which will now be 10.83TB. Should be enough for now. Holly gets the 5TB for backups in her IcyBox, I get her 2TB so together with my other 1TB I can make backups via my Gembird USB3.0 HDD stand. At present backing up my Windows partition.

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