Bitdefender / Spam conflict with Opus?

I have Bitdefender and as soon as I install Opus I loose most of my Spam buttons in the toolbar in my outlook (part of the Bitdefender spam s/w). If I uninstall Opus, the full toolbar re-appears.

After an exchange of emails with BitDefender, they seem to think that it is a priviledge related issue and I will loose some of the buttons if I'm not running as an administrator with the associated privileges. This makes sense since the buttons I loose have to do with configuration of the spam functions.

Does Opus do anything in the area of "privileges" for an administrator???

Any other ideas??? As I say, if I uninstall Opus - Bitdefender/Spam works just fine.

Mike M

Which version of Windows?

Are you launching Outlook from Opus?

Opus doesn't change any permissions at all on your machine or in your account, but if you launch a program from Opus then that program inherits whatever permissions Opus has, which may be different to what you get when launching via a different method. (That seems unlikely, though, since Opus itself should inherit its permissions from the shell/explorer, unless we're talking about Vista and UAC where things can be different...)

I'm running XP and Outlook 2003...

The problem occurred and I suspected that some s/w was stepping on "something". So I've rebuilt from scratch and installed BitDefender as one of the very first items. Then as I've added all of my applications back one-at-a-time, I check the toolbar in Outlook and it's fine until I install Opus. I then uninstalled Opus and my Bitdefender/spam buttons reappear. ????

I love Opus!!! I hate to think of operating w/o it.

Mike

Are you launching Outlook from Opus?

Have you tried turning Explorer Replacement mode off in Opus?

Have you tried telling Opus not to be the default FTP:// handler?

Those are the only things I can think of which might affect BitDefender or Outlook.

I am not launching Outlook from Opus.

I have now re-installed Opus w/ Replacement Mode Off, no FTP handler. and to not start w/ windows.

W/O Opus started - Outlook / Bitdefender toolbar is OK

W/ Opus started (i.e. icon in the notification area of task tray) - Toolbar is not displayed and when it is turned-on via right clicking in the toolbar area and activating it, it is reduced to a non-administrator version with very few of the buttons on it.

I have attached a .JPG screen shot of the working version and a .JPG of the failing environment w/ OPUS active.

Mike




Very strange. I would try running Process Monitor, setting the filter so it only reports things which outlook.exe and dopus.exe do, then launch Outlook with and without Opus running. Then run the two log files through WinMerge or another tool for comparing files to see what's different between the two.

I can't think of why there would be this conflict but there must be some explanation.

Anybody else reading this using Bitdefender and Opus?

Oh my heavens -

I have been trying to track and resolve this very same problem since last September!

I have worked with BD support, sharing log files - unloading and reinstalling BDIS V10 more times then I can count to isolate and resolve this issue with no success.

As they say 90% of the fix is identifying the source, so thank you Mike.

I will be happy to run any tests that may help towards a resolution. Currently, I'm working on high priority project so it may take me longer then I would like to dig in really deep at this moment.

I have seen this on XP Pro and now on XP MCE.

Regards,

Ren

Ren -
It's nice to know I'm not alone here...

It appears on the surface that we have two pieces of s/w bumping heads but without addition info from someone really "in-the-know" or on the inside, we have only identified a problem w/ no knowledge-based path to its solution.

We on the outside can do traces/monitors... etc all day long but w/o some guidance from the principals involved, it is really shooting-in-the-dark. And shooting-in-the-dark is not my "pay the mortgage" job.

If BD and Opus want to get involved and resolve this conflict, I'll be glad to burn a little more time. But as of now, the only thing I can say is "I loved Opus but I had to stop using it when it stepped on BD... so use it with caution".

Mike

What have BitDefender support said about this? Presumably they should know what will trigger their software to go into this mode - we certainly have no idea. Opus doesn't "hook into" Outlook (or anything else, except Explorer when you have the Explorer Replacement mode active.)

When I originally corresponded w/ BD about "the spam toolbar is incomplete..." I hadn't discovered that Opus was even involved. Their response was:

[b]Thank you for your interest in our BitDefender security solution.

  1. The incomplete antispam toolbar appears when logging to the PC by using an Windows user account that does not have administrative rights.

Please login to the PC using the administrator account and check if any issue persists (missing options from the antispam toolbar).[/b]
[b]


This makes total sense since you wouldn't expose "Settings" and other buttons to non-admin types of users.

Mike

[/b]

Ok, but Opus doesn't change the way you login to your computer. As I think Leo said, if you run Outlook from within Opus it will inherit the same permissions as Opus has, and on Vista this would mean it would have a limited token as most programs do under Vista - but under XP, if you're logged in as Administrator, Opus will have full admin permission and so will anything launched from it.

And if you're not launching Outlook from Opus then it's totally impossible for Opus to affect the permissions that Outlook (or any other software) runs at.

You will need to go back to BitDefender and ask them exactly what it is that triggers this problem.

From strictly the users point of view, the statement "... and the finger pointing begins!" is appropriate.

Don't get me wrong. I understand your position better than you might know. You don't see anything that you're doing that would cause this.

From BD's point of view I'm sure they will say that it's apparent that BD doesn't have a problem. And, why would they think they do? Thus, having the inclination to spend the time to provide the exact methods/coding they use in this area is doubtful (and also understandable).

I really love being in the middle here.

I will send to BD a link to this complete thread but as the user in the middle here... I don't expect a lot... (but it would be nice to be surprised).

Ren --- do you have a active contact at BD? If not I'll go through the front door at BD support.

Mike

I'm glad you see our point of view. But note I didn't say "it's not our fault", nor did I say "it's BitDefender's fault". I simply said you will need to ask BitDefender what conditions can cause this (other than lack of admin permission which - as I explained above - does not seem to be the reason.)

We don't have the source code to their product - they do. Therefore they are the only ones who are able to look at the source code and say "ah yes, if a program is running on the system that does this it might make us switch back to non-Admin mode."

Of course I suspect that their response will be as immediately helpful as ours, :slight_smile: But it's worth a try, as there's literally nothing we can do from this end without some information from BitDefender on what they are looking for.

I peeked at BitDefender forum and it seems the problems with disappearing toolbar is known there, not associated with DO.

X.

[quote="Xyzzy"]I peeked at BitDefender forum and it seems the problems with disappearing toolbar is known there, not associated with DO.

X.[/quote]
Is that bitdforum.com ? I thought I'd take a look. It's one of those forums where you have to create an account just to read posts (sigh!) but I made an account only to find that the Search feature is disabled. :frowning: I'm assuming I can't use Google to search the forums as it would've be able to read them without an account.

I thought of something to try:

Go to Preferences - Double-Click - Desktop and turn everything off. Press OK and then, just to be on the safe side, reboot.

Then load Opus and Outlook and see if the problem still occurs.

The desktop double-click feature causes Opus to install a mouse hook (so it can detect that you've double-clicked on the Desktop), which in turn results in dopuslib.dll being loaded into other processes (due to the way mouse hooks work in Windows). If BitDefender is paranoid, or just has a bug, then this extra DLL might cause it to change behaviour.

This still seems like a long shot but it's got to be something a little strange like this that is tripping up BitDefender since Opus has no explicit interactions with Outlook or BD.

Just what google spit out (I don't use BD):

bitdefender.com/KB85-en--Tro ... olbar.html

google.com/search?hl=pl&clie ... Szukaj&lr=
(use cached copy!)

X.

Ah, okay. Those threads/articles seem to be about no toolbar appearing at all, rather than appearing but with buttons missing, so I think they're differnet issues. I wonder if the BitDefender people thought this is what was meant when it was reported to them, though?

I've just received this from BitDefender Support:

Dear Mike,

I have escalated this to both the application team and the product manager. I am awaiting a response from them.

My impression is that the Opus application is either modifying permissions on c:\program files\bitdefender#\bdo.dll, which is the dll that drives the antispam toolbar, or it is modifying some part of Outlook responsible for the integration of add-ons.

I will let you know what i receive from them after they look into this.
Thanks.

Thank you for your interest in our BitDefender security solution.

Best regards,

BitDefender Technical Support Engineer

I'll keep you posted on anything else I get..

Regards ---- Mike

I just tried turning off the double-click options/rebooting/ and trying it again. It still fails:

If Opus is started and therefore minimized into the tray, the toolbar doesn't appear and when "turn-on" it is the reduced non-administrator version.

If opus is ended or never started, the full toolbar is present.

Regards --- Mike