Hello.

I presented myself to the community in a previous post, now I am glad to share with you my experience with Webroot software, I hope this may help someone else in similar situations.



I am currently testing WSAC on 3 machines, where I had Norton NIS in use till last week.



Although Webroot doesn't require to uninstall another security software before installing it, I proceeded the usual way of uninstalling Norton first and installing Webroot soon thereafter, in the (possibly wrong) hope of having less chances to mess up the system this way.

According to communications I had with the Support Team, uninstalling other security software is recommend, but not to leave the computer unprotected even for a short period, I could also have acted the other way around, i.e. installing WSA first and uninstalling NIS later, but, as I said, I have not tried this.

Although the use of the Norton removal tool is recommend here and there, according to Norton this tool is required only to remove partial, aborted or corrupted installations, so I preferred to uninstall NIS the standard way, from the control panel, which offers the option of a “complete” removal of the product anyway.

The installation of WSAC was then without problems on two machines, but I had problems on the third one, probably for my fault, because clicking on the wrong place I caused the activation of Windows Defender.

Although the issue is not documented (at least for what I have seen) I realized that the two programs do conflicts with each other!

In fact I had to disable Defender to let WSA connect to the web, but nevertheless the installation resulted incomplete.

I followed the instructions of the Support Team to remove WSA and repeat a clean install:

1) uninstall WSA (from the control panel, or typing “appwiz.cpl” in the run string, which brings you in the same place);

2) reboot the computer;

3) check inside program data (type %PROGRAMDATA% in the run field) if a directory WRData is present and in case rename it;

4) download a fresh installer from here: http://anywhere.webrootcloudav.com/zerol/wsainstall.exe

5) run the installer and enter the keycode;

6) don't import the settings of the previous installation if asked.

After these steps WSAC installed correctly.



However, after a while I received an alert from Windows Update about an important update available: KB2267602, i.e. the new definitions for Windows Defender!

So from one side Defender was disabled, but on the other side it appeared like enabled for WU!?

At first I simply tried not to install the update and to hide it, but nevertheless it kept coming back! So I tried to install it, but the result was error 80070005.

I thought one possible cause could be Defender being disabled, or at least not completely enabled, so I tried to enable it temporarily, but opening Defender I could access only the initial page (not the settings page), and clicking on the "start" button I got an error saying something like “Impossible to run the service. The resource is not in the appropriate state to execute the requested operation.”.

At this point I suspected that it was perhaps Webroot to inhibit Defender.

I asked to the Support Team, but the reply was not arriving, so I tried myself something to get rid of this nuisance. This is what I did:

1) I deactivated WSA (via the command shutdown protection in the menu);

2) I activated Defender, via control panel, operating center;

3) I updated Defender (at first it was unable to connect to the web (?), but later it did);

4) run a scan with Defender (just to check everything was OK);

5) run Windows Update to verify that all available updates were installed correctly;

5) disabled Defender, unchecking BOTH checkboxes in the settings panels “activate app” and “activate real time protection”, after this Defender resulted “deactivated”;

6) reactivated Webroot (it's possible to do this from the commands menu, or via control panel, operating center);

7) checked everything again (WU didn't find any new update to install!);

😎 rebooted to see if WSA started correctly.



With my surprise I had the same problem with WU and Defender also on another machine, one where WSA installed without problems! So I  repeated the procedure also on this machine.

The 3rd machine instead didn't manifest (at least hitherto) the issue, I cannot tell why.

At present everything seems to be working correctly. I hope not to have more problems (at least for a while) and to enjoy WSAC from now on!