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Greetings



First, I just uninstalled the Avast! 2015 from an XP puter, too high CPU, also too many unneeded modules to disable, and began searching for a good free or inexpensive light replacement.  Webroot is my first choice.



First an annoyance or three.

 

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MINOR STUFF



First: on install, we should be specifically asked which shields we want to initially install.  This can help prevent a clash with an existing runner.



Second: the system tray, if we decide e.g. the Firewall is off but the rest is on, should not say ...

    "Webroot .. Protection DIsabled". 

Either it should be quiet when there are mixed on-off (after all, that was my choice) or it should say specifically "Firewall disabled".



Third: At one point I was ready to uninstall, and I got a message:

"Your computer is currently infected. Are you sure you want to uninstall?"

Since I have a clean system, based on the scan, please come up with another message.  That was tacky.



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MAJOR



Fourth, I got two BSODs.  Following a discussion, I installed WHOCRASHED home, free from Resplendence.  I had PrivateFirewall installed ( a cousin of Webroot, as I remember) and WhoCrashed told me it was the .sys files from the firewalls causing the problem.  For now, I turned off the Webroot Firewall (dunno which might be better, PrivateFirewall is already trained).



So far, so good.  Some discussion also on DonationCoder.



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SCAN QUESTION



RIght-Click on system tray ..

Why not a way from the normal interfaces screen (did I miss it?)



And no options on the scan .. that is a bit unusual.  Yes I see "scan settings" however I am used to various quick scans, exclusions, drive choicese, etc.



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KUDOS AND SUGGESTIONS



Allow me to compliment you on ACTIVE PROTECTION statistics:

"SecureAnywhere has used 1.31%of your CPU since installation and 0.440% disk space. Average scan time is 4.6 minutes."



Also the EXECUTION HISTORY is nice, a type of helpful logical program.  Maybe you could enhance that with a summary file over a time span where the same program only appears once, showing you everything that ran.



Also the SYSTEM ANALYZER is nice. Even telling me about a memory leak. (However, where is Firefox? which is King Leak.)



I like the fact that you do real-world thinking presentation.



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Steven
Hello Steven,

 

Thanks for the throughough feedback! First of all dont worry Firefox will appear in the memory leak section soon enough 🙂 Joking aside I`ll answer some of the questions:

 

 

First: on install, we should be specifically asked which shields we want to initially install.  This can help prevent a clash with an existing runner.

 

I personally disagree with this, Webroot is designed to protect our customers with as little input as possible. If you want to tweak it the settings are there. Asking customers if they want all of our dozen features to be enabled would confuse/annoy people.



Second: the system tray, if we decide e.g. the Firewall is off but the rest is on, should not say ...

    "Webroot .. Protection DIsabled". 

Either it should be quiet when there are mixed on-off (after all, that was my choice) or it should say specifically "Firewall disabled".

 

This was talked about a number of times, I agree that the tray icon and UI should be a different colour. 



Third: At one point I was ready to uninstall, and I got a message:

"Your computer is currently infected. Are you sure you want to uninstall?"

Since I have a clean system, based on the scan, please come up with another message.  That was tacky.

 

If the client says your infected then it believes it is, its not a marketing message!

 

Fourth, I got two BSODs.  Following a discussion, I installed WHOCRASHED home, free from Resplendence.  I had PrivateFirewall installed ( a cousin of Webroot, as I remember) and WhoCrashed told me it was the .sys files from the firewalls causing the problem.  For now, I turned off the Webroot Firewall (dunno which might be better, PrivateFirewall is already trained).

 

If your experience BSOD's with a certain program and our own program please get in contact so I can get some logs to see if I can replicate said issue. BSOD's are obviously quite serious and we would like to fix them if possible!

 
Hello there, welcome to the Community!

 

Wow, what a post... lots of good comments there.  There is one item or two that I do have to comment on.

 

Uninstalls: I have uninstalled and re-installed probably more than almost any other NON Employee.  I am just a user, but I have reinstalled a LOT due to also using a pre-release Beta version frequently.  NEVER have I ONCE had a warning that my system is infected.  

 

BSODS:  As someone who worked in a top spot of the Geek Squad "Escalations" department, responsible for directly reporting any issues with the software to Webroot that millions of customers call into Geek Squad support about,  as well as the other Best Buy Subscription Software vendors, I can tell you that BSODs are very very very rare.  They can happen with ANY software you install, but WSA has a very low incidance rate of issue.  Webroot Support, as Rakanisheu noted, is usually able to determine the cause of any such events and produde a fix for the problem.

 

Again, really great feedback, and a great post.  If you continue as a WSA user I do hope that you will continue to be an active member of the Community.
 

Thanks. Just to be clear, I was only talking about the three big shields on install, Web, malware-file, and firewall, not a dozen items.  If you have a firewall, or an AV (that you may be thinking of uninstalling) and you do not have the option to say no to webroot, then something can happen just like happened to me.  I was a hair's breadth from quitting the whole thing after the two BSODs. Which I then determined was almost surely the two firewalls fighting or clashing.  You could strongly recommend, pre-checked, the three shields, but if I had the option I would have said no to firewall and avoided the problem.  Then, if I liked Webroot, it is a trial period technically after all, I may have uninstalled Private Firewall and checked Webroot as good to go.



As to the message,the scan had found one very modest problem (an .exe called Quick Task Terminator, something like that, was flagged, it may or may not have been a false positive) which I had quarantined, before I got the dubious (tacky) "infected" message before uninstall.  Since it was at the beginning of the process, I may do it again and take a pic if it happens again.



If you want to try to replicate my BSOD .. put Private FIrewall free  on an XP system and then do a Webroot Complete install.  This is probably a rare situation, since Private Firewall is a bit player (with, in fact, some Webroot heritage). I would venture the odds are pretty good that combo will give a BSOD. I think i have the log file that specifically says that the two .sys files caused the BSOD (not that such logs are 100% accurate, but here it sounds right.)



All in all, despite the BSOD glitch, I am a happy camper.  My XP system is back to decent running, it seems to have some decent protection (I have not gone into the question of warning messages good or missing and logs, it is a bit early for that) that is light, which is what my Dell XP system needs.  I may not be so quick to dump Avast on my stronger systems, unless I specifically have a problem, but I have Webroot on one PC, one laptop, and some more in active consideration, including a friend or two, since I will likely get a license for five.  After a short trial.



Steven

 
Thanks for the reply!

 

That makes a lot of sense.... and again thank you for the detailed feedback!

 

I would need to have a reply from another source to confirm this, but I THINK that if WSA is uninstalled with items still in the quarantine, there may be a chance that they would show as an infection remaining.  If the quarantine is cleared prior to uninstall, the flag you saw would not have been present.

 

Generally, the quarantine is there so that one can double check files removed prior to permanent delete, in case they were flagged as bad in error and need to be restored.  The general expectation of the software itself, and the uninstaller, I THINK, is that once quarantine items have been checked they would be either restored or permanently deleted.

 

 
Ok, that makes sense.  I consider quarantine as == delete.

Webroot may want to tweak the message.



Anyway, all fine. 

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