Scripting

Figured I'd make an account just to answer this cuz it's very irritating, and this is the highest-ranking google result that I can reply to. 

I saw one solution pointing to a 'business/pro' uninstaller, but that uninstaller required certain paramaters like... surprise... the uninstall password. Then I saw a solution with a password reset executable from BitDefender. It supposedly needed to run in safe mode. So I did that, running as administrator, and it seemed to complete successfully... but the next time I tried to uninstall, there was the password prompt.

I tried uninstalling from safe mode, but no prompt or confirmation ever came up. You can double click the entry in the list of programs, or right click and choose uninstall.. nothing happens.

Finally, the solution for me was the ugly, brute force method. 

I rebooted into safe mode, navigated to C:\program files\bitdefender\ (whatever the folder is called) and simply shift+deleted it. A single file failed to delete for me, something like "bitdefendercontext.dll" which I think is a file that allows bitdefender options to appear when you right click. I ignored this single file, I couldn't delete it even with Unlocker (I think in safe mode, unlocker doesn't work).

Still in safe mode... I then ran regedit and clicked at the very top, and did ctrl+F to search for the string 'bitdef' without quotes ... this will find bitdefender mentioned in the registry, and wherever it appeared, I'd delete it.***  Be careful here, the usual registry disclaimer applies: if you delete the wrong thing you can screw up your PC. 

If you aren't familiar with the registry this is mildly risky. But basically, on the left are keys (which look like little folders) and on the right are values (which look like little files with descriptions next to them). Generally, if bitdefender appears as a value on the right, along with a handful of other items... you can probably safely delete the key (folder) on the left containing this bitdefender item. But if bitdefender appears as just one product in a list of other, unrelated products (e.g. defender, or windows, or whatever).. .don't delete the entire key/folder on the left, only delete the bitdefender value on the right.

Anyway if you delete all bitdefender registry items, and their associated keys, you should prevent the PC from trying to run the (now deleted) bitdefender programs when you reboot.

Some registry entries point to specific bitdefender files contained in C:\windows\system32 that you can delete, like the endpoint service (I think it was called bdepsvc.dll).

Again, be careful not to delete the wrong thing. A lot of bitdefender files start with "BD" but not all of them. For example BDEunlockwizard (and several other BDE files) are related to Bitlocker, which is windows built-in encryption feature. Don't mess with that.

To clean up bitdefender services from the list of services, go back to the registry and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services and if you see bitdefender keys here, you can nuke them. To clean up bitdefender automatic startup items, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and delete bitdefender related values on the right side. Don't delete the Run key/folder itself, on the left.

To double check there's no other unwanted startup items, click the start menu and type msconfig to see a list of startup items.

If you wanna delete a file, and can't get permission to delete it, and unlocker isn't available... another trick is to right click, properties, go to security tab, then take ownership of the file with your own username. Then from the same security tab, change permissions to 'full control' for your username. This is also the fix if you get some crap about "you need permission from TrustedInstaller". 

After doing all this and rebooting into normal mode, bitdefender is gone, no errors popped up, seems to be ok.

Forgive me but why does it matter? An application is just a bunch of files and registry data. Just build an uninstall package or script and run that.

Hi,
is there anyway to download the installer so that i can have a look?
Have you looked at the vendor site for enterprise deployment tools / tips?
Do you have the original installer command?
Is it really a legacy installer, or a MSI wrapped in an executable?

Phil

Hi Phil,

Thanks again for your help. Unfortunately, all I have is this old install file when it was initially rolled out. I hope that it is useful.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ivkmlgldno7v5zw/EndPointSecurity3.6.exe?dl=0

When it was initially rolled out there was a BitDefender server that managed the deployment and all updates and then pushed the agent to all machines. So it wasn't even rolled out through Kace. Unfortunately, the server is not accessible anymore, so i can't uninstall it with the deployment tools BitDefender wants us to remove it with. That's why I thought there could be a way to remove it through Kace. Let me know if you need anything else.