HomeSearchMerchandiseAboutMichael HorowitzMy Computerworld Blog

PC-cillin Gripes  PC-cillin is an anti-virus program from Trend Micro

Denied Rebate 

March 19, 2006. Adding insult to injury, Trend Micro denied my rebate request saying that the documentation was not sufficient. I've done many rebates and, take my word for it, the documentation was sufficient. At this point, I will never buy another Trend Micro product. 

Won't Shut Down

February 24, 2006. Windows XP. Up to date on all XP bug fixes and also PC-cillin updates. 
Right click on the PC-cillin icon in the system tray and Exit. The icon goes away, but three Trend Micro processes remain: TMOAgent.exe, PCClient.exe and tmproxy.exe. 

Insecure By Default

February 23, 2006. Windows XP. Up to date on all XP bug fixes and also PC-cillin updates. 
PC-cillin displayed the Eicar test virus pattern in plain text on a web page. Oops. Turns out the default behavior for auto-protect mode (which Trend Micro refers to as "real time" scanning) is not to scan all file types. That's the safest behavior and should be the default. New file types contain viruses all the time. It also let me download the plain text version of the test virus without objection. 

Even worse, is that it does not scan within ZIP files by default. Just disgraceful. 

If you know anyone using PC-cillin, tell them to do System -> Scan settings and check these things. However, even after telling PC-cillin to scan ALL files, it still let me display the plain text version of the Eicar test virus in my web browser. I guess "all" is not "all". 

Files to scan in auto-protect/real time mode: Having used Norton AntiVirus for years, the two choices for files to automatically scan were either all files or files of specific types, and there was a long list of file types that might contain viruses. Fine. In addition to these two options, PC-cillin has a third called "selected files". Beats me what this means. 

Why is there a configuration option to search for Trojans? What's the down side to doing this? 

Why is there a configuration option to scan for Spyware? Is there a downside to this too? 

Program tsc.exe is a major annoyance. It often spikes to use 90% of the cpu.

Note: A reader of this page suggested the high CPU usage by TSC may be due to this bug. 
[Hot Fix] Enhancing the OfficeScan 7.0 client Damage Cleanup Services handling

After much Sherlock Holmes like sleuthing, it turns out the PC-cillin does, in fact, tell you the date of the virus definitions. But where? Not using Status -> AntiVirus. Not using Help either. 

No Response From Technical Support

Their email/web form technical support is a sham, a fraud. There isn't any.

When you submit a question, the response says they will respond within 24 hours. Not true. 

January 28, 2006. I opened a tech support request to Trend Micro to ask how someone determines the date of the virus definitions. Five days later, still no response. 

January 30, 2006.  I created another tech support request,  asking the same question again. 

February 3, 2006. I created my third tech support request asking about program tsc.exe that burns a lot of cpu at boot time.  

February 24, 2006. Still, no responses yet to any tech support question. This borders on consumer fraud. 

Out of Box Experience

January 28, 2006. PC-cillin version 11 running on Windows XP SP2 with all bug fixes applied. 

Installing 

It wants a user name but doesn't explain what it is. My real name? A logon id to some computer somewhere? How long can it be? Are special characters allowed?  

User Guide: Now you see it, now you don't. 
When you first put the product CD in the computer, the initial window has an option to install PC-cillin and another to read the User Guide (on the CD it is file guidebook.pdf). Fine. But after you install the product, the User Guide is nowhere to be found. Trend Micro doesn't bother copying it to the C disk. For a product on it's 11th version this is disgraceful. Trend had 10 prior chances to copy the User Guide from the CD to the hard disk and failed every time. I suspect this says a lot about the company. If they can't do the simple, trivial, easy stuff . . . 

Speaking of the User Guide, it is for PC-cillin anti-virus 2004. Yet, all the other documentation refers to it as PC-cillin version 11. 

I poke around the PC-cillin files on my C disk and find a file called tmhelp.chm that is somewhat useful help. However, you'd only find it by manually poking around. It is also not listed via Start -> Programs -> etc. 

My First Time

After installing PC-cillin, program pcclient.exe tries to make outbound net connection to 66.35.255.27 using HTTP. Shortly thereafter, so does the TrendMicro Outbreak agent, TMOAgent.exe, which tries to connect via HTTP to 65.169.170.154. 

The main/initial PC-cillin window tells you nothing! Nothing at all. Nada. Zilch. Zippo. Norton AntiVirus (which has many gripes on this site) does this much better, it conveys the most important information that you need to know right up-front in the initial window. How hard is this? 

The Quick Start Guide says you must register to get pattern file updates, yet the software does not prompt you to do so. The registration opton is buried two levels deep. More bad design. And this is only the beginning. 

The Quick Start Guide says to join Trend Micro's Customer Care Center. Why? What is it? It doesn't say. Apparently, this is none of my business. 

To fully register, you have to respond to an email message from Trend Micro. Guaranteed SPAM for life. 

Next up is New Member Registration at the Trend Micro Customer Care Center. This is the third registration with Trend Micro and I still can't use the [expletive deleted] product. It seems the product exists as much for marketing reasons as to find viruses. 

Survey

A survey asks "what is most important feature of PC-cillin?" One choice is "Proactive alerts of virus outbre". That's not my typo. Don't buy this product for its spelling.  

I could not enter the survey due to this error: 

Due to the instability of your Internet connection, we cannot process your request. Please try again in a few minutes. (Error Code: -7ffbf1ec)

There are two errors with the above error message. First, I'd bet anything that the error code is itself an error. No programmer uses negative hexadecimal error codes. Second, the message is wrong, because my Internet connection was fine. The Trend Micro web site loaded very quickly. 

Of course you can't re-submit the survey data as there is no back button. Such amateurs. 

I right click and go back and try to submit my survey answeres again. This time IE objects: "The page cannot be displayed." Some Mickey Mouse operation Trend Micro is. 
   It's trying to load page "survey_success.asp" - how ironic. 
   The survey page was: pccreg.antivirus.com/11/pcc/110/pccreg/Localizable%20Objects/survey.asp?

Registering

After all this registering, the main User Interface window is still telling me to click on the register now button. The left hand doesn't know what right hand is doing. How bad must the first 10 versions have been? 

Then it says that after registering, you have to activate the product. In other words, registering twice with different Trend Micro entities and supplying an initial userid up front, is still not enough. They really don't want you to use the product. At this point the feeling is mutual. 

How do you activate the product? That's none of my business. There are no instructions. 

The whole registration process is very confusing - not only are there two different registrations, but you end up with four open windows. 

To see where I am in terms of registering, I click the status button in main window and ... it tells me nothing. No surprise here. Am I registered? Doesn't say. Is the product activated? Doesn't say. It should be the Lack-of-Status button. 

The whole OOB experience is disgraceful enough. The fact that this is version 11 of the product makes it mal-practice. 

Update

I try to do a manual update to get new virus definitions, which Trend calls "pattern files". It can't connect to the Internet. As before, this is not true - I'm happily surfing web pages at the same time. 

The antivirus status says the last update was today. This is not true as it failed to connect to the update computer twice. This is a big point: 

The product LIES about something very important. Arguably the most important thing - the date of the last update. This is disgraceful. 

The fourth time I try to run a manual update it finally gets a dial tone from the mother ship. After the update downloads, the product disappears. No kidding. No message. Nothing. Just gone. Did it crash? Task manager shows a program called patch.exe from Trend Micro is running, but not doing much of anything. Two minutes later a message from PC-cillin: I have to reboot. This whole process is disgraceful. 

Useless and Confusing 

If you hover the mouse over the Trend Micro icon in the system tray/notification area, it says "Trend Micro antivirus 7.000/2.184.000". 

Say what? What are those numbers? Could anything be more useless? I don't think so. Maybe its the phone number of a brothel in the Philippines (home of Trend Micro).

And what's with the "Trend Micro Anti-virus"? The box says the product is PC-cillin. Before it had two different version numbers (11 and 2004), now it has two different names. If a company can't even settle on a name for their product, it doesn't give me any confidence. This will be my last Trend Micro software purchase. 

There is a big firewall button in the main user interface. Yet the product does not include a firewall. 

Windows is re-booted. 

Program tsc.exe, the Trend Micro Damage Cleanup program is burning 80% of the cpu at startup time. This lasts about 20 seconds or so. A couple days later, this is still true. 

Task manager shows there are now five Trend Micro processes running. Five!  Sneezy, dopey.. No, that was a different group. The processes are:
       pccguide, pcclient, tmntsrv, tmoagent, tmproxy

Update Again

With Norton Antivirus you have to run Live Update again and again until it finally says you are up to date. In that vein, I do another manual update, and it says I have the latest components. Components? What does this mean? The latest version of the software? Pattern file updates? Both? 

And my favorite gripe: 

Nowhere does PC-cillin say, in English, the date of the virus definitions!

And this is version 11. I guess the topic never came up in the first 10 versions. How disgraceful.

Scan One File

I open Windows Explorer, right click on a file and there is an option to "scan virus". Say what? Was this written by someone for whom English was their ninth language? How hard is it to change this to "Virus scan with PC-cillin"? I thought I was infected with the "scan" virus. 

The single file virus scan found no virus. OK. But the popup window says "If you chose to include the boot sector, manual scan has already performed the specified scan action on any boot viruses that were detected". If? The software doesn't know it's own settings and options. One part of PC-cillin sets an option to scan boot sectors and the other part is unable or too lazy to read this option and report on it. It's too much trouble for Trend Micro programmers to actually tell the user what the program did. I'd like to know if it scanned the boot sector - this is important. And if it scanned there and found something, I really want to know about it.  

Where is Johny Carson and the Great Carnak when you need him? Maybe he can tell me what happened with my boot sector. Or Trend Micro should hire some Symantec programmers. At least they know when their product scans boot sectors. 

And why is this message in a popup window? There is already a scan files window being displayed showing the status. The popup window just covers the scan files window. Its hard to believe adults created this software. 

Scan ??? Files 

There is a scan now link in main UI window. Never mind that it's a link instead of a button, when everything else in this window is a button. Click it and the software does a scan. Of what? It doesn't say. Just disgraceful.

All those articles rating PC-cillin highly? The authors must have been bribed. The software design couldn't be worse if a child did it. Forest Gump would have been an improvement. 

I try to confirm my registration with one of the Trend Micro entities that I had to register with (don't ask which one) and get an error: 

The request cannot be processed because the Internet connection has become unstable. 
Please try again in a few minutes. (93000000)

Again, this is not true as other web sites load just fine. I do it again. And again. And again. On the 4th attempt, it worked. 

Judging by the files on the CD, the product dates to February 2004, yet it was being sold in December 2005 by Best Buy, where I bought it. Best buy says it was released Nov 22, 2004 - yet all the EXE files date to February 2004.  

Updating the Damage Cleanup Engine / Template files with PC-cillin Internet Security 2004 and 2005. OK, so I don't know what this template file is, but whatever it is, PC-cillin can't seem to update itself automatically. I wonder if it tells you that? Norton AntiVirus had virus definitions. That's all. Plain and simple. It didn't have a damage cleanup engine with template files. 

Where is it? 

February 1, 2006. PC-cillin detects that I should install new "components," so I do. After a brief download, nothing. I mean really nothing. The PC-cillin window disappears. The PC-cillin icon in the system tray also disappears. Did it crash? Maybe 10-15 seconds later, the icon is back in the system tray. This could not be designed worse if you tried.  

FYI

Tech support:  888-608-1009  Monday – Friday 5 am– 5 pm Pacific Time. Submit a tech support request. 

The main tech support page at Trend Micro reports on the latest "pattern file". Maybe I can crack the code: 
  January 30, 2006:  3.185.00 

Oooodles of pattern files. 

From the EULA: "BACK-UP. For as long as You use the Software, You will regularly back-up Your computer system(s) on a separate media. You acknowledge that any failure to do so may significantly decrease Your ability to mitigate any harm or damage arising from any problem or error in the  Software. "