Disabling Real Time File or Anti* Protection Disables both. Why?

With NOD32 v4.0,437, on my Win2kSp4 computer, the NOD32 system tray icon menu includes (among other things) the following two options:

Disable real-time file system protection
Disable Antivirus and antispyware protection

If I disable either one, and then look again at the NOD32 system tray icon menu, both Disable options have become Enable options, suggesting that both have been disabled even though only one was selected to be disabled.

Is that a bug, or is there a rationale for tying both together?

If that's not a bug, apparently NOD32 needs me to disable not only file system protection but also antivirus and antispyware protection (and vice versa). If so, I don't understand why the icon menu contains two separate Disabling options.

Roger Folsom

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BACKGROUND
This issue has arisen because installations of new software usually recommend disabling or exiting any currently running programs.

When I install new software, of course I am in the Administrator account. And almost always I have previously downloaded and saved the software. (Adobe Reader no longer lets me do that, which was one of several reasons for my switch to Foxit Reader.)

To comply with the usual "shut down or exit everything else" installation recommendation, before installing the software, I shutdown my internet connection (unless the installation requires internet access) and then use NOD32's system tray icon to disable file system protection, because I am guessing that file system protection is what would cause conflicts.

 

It's perfectly logical as real-time protection is part of Antivirus and antispyware protection.

 

Marcos:

Thanks. But to me, on a logical icon menu, although disabling Antivirus and antispyware protection would also disable its real-time protection part, disabling the real-time protection part would not disable also all of the other parts of Antivirus and antispyware protection.

Clearly I don't understand the organization of NOD32 AV v4.

Therefore, I can certainly live with your answer, and now that I know that the icon menu doesn't have a bug, there's no need to debate the issue further.

Thanks for your quick response.

Cordially, Roger Folsom

 

If you disable real-time protection, not all antivirus and antispyware modules are enabled so the menu item changes to "Enable AV+AS protection".

 

@Marcos
If you disable real-time file system protection, then ALL OTHER antivirus and antispyware modules are STILL ENABLED (document protection, email protection, web access protection)...so it doesn't seem logical to me that "enable antivirus and antispyware protection" and "enable real-time file system protection" (from systray icon menu) imply the same thing...when you have two options in menu, you expect they do two different things, right?

 

If any of the Antivirus and antispyware modules (real-time, web access, email or document protection) gets disabled, then it's logical that the tray menu item will change to "Enable AV+AS protection". AV+AS protection covers all modules and if one is disabled, AV+AS protection would not be fully ensured.

 

Then you should put all the modules separately (not just real-time) in sistray menu and rename "enable/disable antivirus and antispyware protection" to "enable/disable all modules".

 

Real-time protection is the most essential module. If one needs to disable a particular module for certain reason, in more than 90% it's the real-time protection module and thus it can be disabled and re-enabled separately.

 

Note: In the original version of the above quote (and also in a third Marcos quote at the end of this message), the word "the" was not bolded and "second" was not there. I made those edits to clarify that the this thread's issue deals with two icon menu items, not just one.

Marcos:

I didn't expect to participate in this thread again, but I think I may have finally figured out the meaning of your posts, and the "logic" of both system tray icon menu items
[Disable or Enable] "real time file system protection"
and
[Disable or Enable] "Antivirus and antispyware protection"
always changing together from Disable to Enable, or from Enable to Disable, when the user changes either one of them.

The logic apparently simply is that
1) Real-time protection is part of antivirus and antispyware protection, so if real-time protection is disabled and needs to be enabled later, then antivirus and antispyware also is (partly) disabled and needs to be enabled later.
2) Antivirus and antispyware protection includes real-time protection, so if antivirus and antispyware protection is disabled and needs to be enabled later, then real-time protection also is disabled and needs to be enabled later.

To inform the user that both icon menu items need to be enabled, both icon menu items change to Enable, even though only one of the two icon menu items had been selected to be disabled.

When one icon menu item is selected to be disabled, changing both icon menu items to Enable can be seen as an attempt to convenience the user:
In either scenario 1) or 2), as soon as later arrives and either real-time file system protection or antivirus and antispyware protection need to be enabled, either one of the two icon menu items can be used to do so, because both are set to "Enable," and clicking either one of them will change both of them to "Disable."

Nevertheless, this has confused me and consumed an enormous amount of my time (and your time) for me to finally understand, because in 13 years of Windows computing I had never before seen a menu where selecting one menu item changed another menu item.

There's got to be a better way, or at least an explanation in the Help file and User Guide. (It may be in either place, but I can't find it.)

Since both icon menu items are linked as described above, until today I had wondered whether they really did different or the same things.

So I experimented and discovered that the two icon menu items, despite being linked, apparently really do separate things, at least according to their dialog boxes and main window messages.

If I Disable real-time file system protection, the grey yes/no dialog box asks:
"Are you sure you want to temporarily disable real-time system protection?"
And the Window message says:
"Antivirus protection is currently disabled.
"Real-time file system protection was disabled by the user. The computer is not currently protected against threats. Enable real time file system protection [link]"

If I Disable antivirus and antispyware protection, the grey yes/no dialog box asks:
"Are you sure you want to temporarily disable Antivirus and antispyware protection?"
And the Window message says:
"Antivirus protection disabled.
"Some of the Antivirus and antispyware protection modules were disabled by user. Complete protection can be enabled here: Start all antivirus and antispyware protection modules [link]."

I ran four more experiments, assuming that the full set of NOD32 AV modules are listed in the main NOD32 AV window:
Real-time file system protection
Document protection
E-mail Client protection
Web Access protection.

In the Advanced setup tree, I disabled each module listed above, one at a time, and then looked at the system tray icon menu.
After disabling the "Real-time file system protection" module, of course
[Disable/Enable] "real-time file system protection" and
[Disable/Enable] "Antivirus and antispyware protection"
both were set to Enable, meaning that both had been disabled.
But after disabling each of the last three modules,
[Disable/Enable] "real-time file system protection" still was set to Disable, meaning that it remained enabled, while
[Disable/Enable] "Antivirus and Antispyware protection" now was set to Enable, meaning that it had been disabled because one of the modules being disabled.

Cordially, Roger Folsom