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Bitdefender problems on a Mac

Nick_G

pfm Member
Hi all.

I got redirected from my Yahoo Mail page earlier to a warning page suggesting that this Mac was infected with three trojans. Not trusting this, I decided to do a scan with Bitdefender. However, it froze partway through the scan and hovering the cursor over the icon in the menu bar showed the spinning beach ball. Somehow I managed to get out of this by force quitting several times and relaunching, only to apparently end up with two copies showing up.

I then upgraded to the latest macOs Mojave, which seemed to clear up the double-copy problem. However, on trying another system scan I'm back to square one with the app freezing partway through the scan and now, after force quitting it bounces in the dock for a while and then appears to stop, without launching. It shows up as 'application not responding' so it is still stuck. Force quitting it causes it to shut down and then immediately try to relaunch before getting stuck again.

Any ideas please? It seems to be stuck in some sort of loop.
 
Which Mac?

Is Bitdefender set up for Mojave etc (ie 64bit etc)

Have you tried another anti virus scanner etc?

Imo I’ve had Macs for a long time now and never used anything to scan for viruses, so wondering if you take this ‘warning’ with a pinch of salt?
 
Thanks guys.

It is a 64-bit version yes.

I'd like to be able to shut it down properly, but I can't as it insists on restarting as soon as I force quit it. So it's sat there unusable in limbo using up resources. If I could leave it shut down for a while I suspect there may be a better chance of it working properly. I've tried killing the processes connected with Bitdefender via Terminal but it won't let me, giving an error of 'illegal operation'.
 
Go into Activity Monitor and shut the programme down from there

If not, force it to shut down by holding down the power button and then restart it at your own leisure
 
Go into Activity Monitor and shut the programme down from there

If not, force it to shut down by holding down the power button and then restart it at your own leisure

I tried to shut it down with Activity Monitor but that didn't work either. I shut down the Mac, left it switched off for a while and have restarted. Bitdefender now appears to be working normally, but it was the same before, until I told it to do a system scan. I'm concerned that if I try that again it'll freeze up again and I'll be back to where I started.
 
Hmmm. Spent the last several minutes sat on one file. Not sure what would cause this although the app hasn't frozen like before.
 
Has it run the course?

Personally I'd be uninstalling and then re-installing and then running it; if it doe the same, try another programme and see if that has any similar issues?
 
No. Still on the same file. Must be about 50 minutes it's not progressed now. It still claims it's scanning though.

PS the file is at Developer/Applications/Instruments.app/Contents/Plugins/DTracePlugin/coredata.usdt if this helps. No idea what that is...
 
No idea; Googling that doesn't bring anything up either

Shut down, restart, remove Bitdefender (Applications, drag programme into trash, empty trash) restart Mac and see how it runs then without Bitdefender

Why do you use an Antivirus, more so on a Mac, do you download a lot of stuff (I don't mean via iTunes or similar) etc?
 
Has it run the course?

Personally I'd be uninstalling and then re-installing and then running it; if it doe the same, try another programme and see if that has any similar issues?
Yes but I would not reinstall it. You can protect yourself by only using a 'standard' account for daily tasks. You can even manage the account to restrict certain activities like opening emails from people you don't know. Also make sure your personal firewall has been turned on and configured.

Cheers,

DV
 
No idea; Googling that doesn't bring anything up either

Shut down, restart, remove Bitdefender (Applications, drag programme into trash, empty trash) restart Mac and see how it runs then without Bitdefender

Why do you use an Antivirus, more so on a Mac, do you download a lot of stuff (I don't mean via iTunes or similar) etc?

Thanks guys.

No I don't download a lot of stuff but I've had hacks into my Skype account before and the hacker was spreading malware, so that's when I bought Bitdefender. It found the offending items and removed them.

Just out of interest I cancelled the scan and have started it again. I'll be interested to see if it stops on the same file.
 
It's paused on a completely different file now, much earlier in the scan. Cancelled, and trying a quick scan now.
 
Nope. Stopped at a different file again and cancelled it.

Now, a few minutes later, it's suddenly decided to do a full system scan all by itself!
 
Bitefender is OK/good. Norton and GData are better but £30 or 40 each. AVG antivitus is as good for hard disc problems and free. Suggest you try to download AVG and run a full scan to see what it says?
 
Bitefender is OK/good. Norton and GData are better but £30 or 40 each. AVG antivitus is as good for hard disc problems and free. Suggest you try to download AVG and run a full scan to see what it says?

Thanks.

Downloaded AVG, and got stuck on the 'Select A Destination' part of the install. 'Install for all users of this computer' is the default, but there's a dialogue box: "You cannot install AVG Antivirus in this location. The AVG Antivirus installer does not allow its software to be installed here". The other options, 'Install for me only' and 'Install on a specific disk' are greyed out.

Update: tried again and install was successful. I'm now scanning...

Seems to be a day for gremlins here for some reason!
 
It's VG and updates its virus defenitions daily. It's not set up to deal with external drives, so be wary if you input files using third party drives, USB sticks and etc since it won't scan them. The V Best IMO is still Norton for a Mac, but it'll cost you £30 odd. See what AVG says and go from there. Im extremis, if you have a time machine back up drive somewhere, I'd do a full clean out and restore everyting back to the day before your yahoo incident, download Norton, run it through and hopefully move on clean.
 


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