Message from Lenovo re PC-Doctor 5 issues

[JaneL]

Dear Lenovo users and admins,

I have to admit that that the past few weeks have been difficult for many of our customers who have tried to upgrade to the latest version of PC-Doctor. I apologize to those Lenovo customers who have been affected and will try to explain the issue the best that I can.

Over the last several years, Lenovo has installed countless versions of PC-Doctor on ThinkPad and ThinkCentre systems. In fact, a new version of the diagnostic software is released every time Lenovo releases a new round of systems. Many customers have asked to get the latest version of PC-Doctor, so late last year PC-Doctor provided Lenovo with a package that would upgrade past versions to the latest via System Update and Software Installer.

Unfortunately for many, the installer code has been modified and improved several times over the years. After releasing the upgrade package to the field and then reading posts on this forum, it was determined that certain versions of PC-Doctor were corrupting the registry during the silent uninstall of the old version during the upgrade process. This is why the upgrade was successful on some systems and caused corruption on others.

As soon as we realized that some users were experiencing problems, we pulled the upgrade from the web.

(Note, a manual install of the application from http://www.lenovo.com/support/site.wss/ ... MIGR-52871 worked properly because it did not perform a silent install as performed in System Update and Software Installer).

We take very seriously the concerns of users who believe that Lenovo has an obligation to provide a fix for what the upgrade broke. If we could, we would. Unfortunately, the upgrade fails in such a way that it removes the uninstall keys in the registry for programs other than PC-Doctor. The only potential fix is to restore a system to a previous state, but as is evident in the postings, this is not always an option.

A second problem arose in mid-December. Lenovo received a new version of PC-Doctor in November. Although it was not intended for System Update or Software Installer, it was inadvertently released during a two-week period in December. This is why the problem re-emerged. That version was removed on December 27.

Lenovo has now received a new version of PC-Doctor with an updated installer. Our plan is to release this to the Lenovo website after it has been thoroughly tested.

Please know that product quality is a top priority for both Lenovo and PC-Doctor. I am the Service and Support focal point for PC-Doctor at Lenovo. Please let me know if any future issues arise or if there are product suggestions going forward. I will make sure that your concerns and ideas are responded to as quickly as possible.

Regards,
Paul

[t41user]

This message from Lenovo looks like a generic PR reply to a company screw up. Of course, Lenovo regrets the damage to user systems. And of course, there is nothing really that Lenovo can do about it.

However, the line about "As soon as we realized that some users were experiencing problems, we pulled the upgrade from the web. " is deceptive PR and untrue, im my opinion. Lenovo continued to cause more damage as their tech people repeatedly mishandled damage complaints at the same time that the more savy folks on this forum pretty much figured exactly where and what the problem was. I barraged PC Doctor tech support with links to this fourm and descriptions of the problem. It seemed pretty clear to me that Lenovo took the link down because PC Doctor recognized the problem and, through effort, managed to get Lenovo to take the link down. It is NOT as though Lenovo know what they are doing and are especially responsive to users and user experiences. Listen to Lenovo, and suffer damage to your system. Listen to the moderators on this forum and plead with PC Doctor to get Lenovo to take down a link, and hopefully Lenovo will take the link down before too many more user systems are damaged. The real story is more like that, as I've seen it more than once.

To recap my main point: Lenovo did not respond to their own customers. Lenovo repeatedly gave bad advice to their own customers that compounded the damage. With help/aid/info from moderators and Lenovo victims on this forum, it was business people at PC Doctor listening to tech people at PC Doctor (who were listening to people on this forum) who convinced Lenovo to take the link down (and, from what I gather, it took some convincing on their part, since Lenovo really did not know what they were doing/talking about).

[bill bolton]

im my opinion.
(snip)
It seemed pretty clear to me
(snip)
The real story is more like that, as I've seen it more than once.

The "real story" is as posted in the message from Lenovo, despite your strongly held beliefs.

Cheers,

Bill

[t41user]

Gee, I guess I could be mistaken. However, I base my possibly mistaken beliefs on emails from PC Doctor representatives saying things like, "At our [that is, PC Doctor's] request, there is now a message on their [that is, Lenovo's] website indicating that PC-Doctor 5 for Windows is temporarily unavailable", as well as on things like a time line seemingly easily constructed by anyone using the dates/times of user reports/complaints on this forum about the PC Doctor problem and the dates/times of actions taken by Lenovo. In the friendly spirit of learning and communication, may I ask what you base your view on, Mr. Bill Bolton? Or, more specifically, may I ask you to clarify a bit on what/where we disagree?

[SGD]

"emails from PC Doctor representatives": http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 763#216763

[t41user]

Right. I received personal emails and thanks from people at PC Doctor too. The point is that Lenovo support personnel continued to deny (or fail to recognize) the real source of the problem and to give users suffering from the problem bad advice about how to proceed. Each day and hour that went by before Lenovo took the link down in response to the request from PC Doctor caused additional problems for additional users who downloaded the program without knowing about the faulty-packaged-installer. That is the basic point and spirit of my post above. Lenovo didn't know what was going on and how bad their tech support was. People on this forum did. Soon PC Doctor did too. Eventually Lenovo caught on, but not before they damaged many user systems. They could have avoided much of that damage if their tech support people were as quick thinking and acting as many of the people on this forum and at PC Doctor. Unfortunately, they just weren't, as evidenced by various things such as user reports on this forum of their calls to Lenovo about the matter.

[GACrabill]

Not to beat a dead horse, but I still believe that this was a much bigger disaster than the battery recall issue. How many laptops were screwed by burning batteries? How many thousands of laptops around the world were screwed by Lenovo's lack of testing ?

AND, they did it a second time in December and it took 2 weeks to get the second untested update removed from their site ?!

Sorry Lenovo, it's going to take a lot more than an apology email to ever get me to trust software updates from Lenovo again.

My advice to all Thinkpad users is to never install Software Installer or System Update software updates unless you have done an image backup immediately beforehand.

Lenovo doesn't test software updates that they get from other companies .... they just put them on their website .... we are the testing mechanism.

[t41user]

I agree with the disgruntled spirit of GACrabill's post, though one might want to consider a more moderate or less extreme conclusion. However, notice that the problem (and disaster for many users) is/was not merely whether or not Lenovo tests their products. I'm sure that Lenovo does quite a bit of testing - and remember that plenty of people installed PC Doctor 5 for Windows without any damage. Nonetheless, what appears to be a very serious problem is that Lenovo telephone support technicians gave horrible advice about the source and solution for the damage caused by the PC Doctor silent installer. Just read the posts on this forum. Many users were calling Lenovo reporting problems after installing PC Doctor - including user requests to take the link down. Lenovo techs repeatedly told many users to do all sorts of unhelpful things and repeatedly failed to take the PC Doctor link down as soon as they could have so as to minimize the total number of systems damaged. Lenovo did not "pull the link down from the web" "as soon as [they] realized that some users were experiencing problems". As I complain in the posts above, Lenovo pulled the link down only after users on this forum convinced people at PC Doctor to convince Lenovo to take the link down. (By the way, Bill Bolton, where is your defense of Lenovo or your statement above?) In a literal sense, Lenovo probably did pull the link down once they realized the problem. However, it arguably took them too long to make this realization. All they had to do was listen carefully, intelligently, and responsively to user reports of user problems. It seems as though they were not doing this. (What were their tech support people doing, robotically reading pre-written steps for generic problems or something?)

[YourOldBuddy]

Not to beat a dead horse, but I still believe that this was a much bigger disaster than the battery recall issue. How many laptops were screwed by burning batteries? How many thousands of laptops around the world were screwed by Lenovo's lack of testing ?

I give up. How many?

Thought it was Sony that made the batteries and to my knowledge a single Lenovo machine was affected by burning battery syndrome.

[andrewb]

How many laptops were screwed by lenovo's lack of testing ? If my company is anything to go by, the answer is simple. All of them.

In my office, with the majority of personnel being Thinkpad users for over 5 years, the aspect of more concern is the absence of a proper apology from Lenovo.

There were always going to be doubts over the reliability of the brand once it was acquired by Lenovo. This episode together with the continued lack of enthusiasm to embrace Linux means that my small company has decided not to buy Thinpads, when we replace our laptops across the board later this year. It may only be 30 high end laptops, but, 30 here, 30 there, they all soon add up.

[ashleys]

My advice to all Thinkpad users is to never install Software Installer or System Update software updates unless you have done an image backup immediately beforehand.

That should be a given for *ANY* software updates.

[PaulJo]

My machine is still in huge problem after the "bug" caused by the automated software update.

My internett company now offers a new lisence for Security as part of my internett connection. I must first uninstall Norton to be able to install the new F-secure software.

MY IBM R40, know only maybee half of the program really installed on my machine. My modell was not able to go from the old rapid restore to the "newer ones" I always had the message "not compatible" I had no restore point. I have no backup of my win.reg. to lean on to.

I'm stuck with this huge problem and my virus lisence is soon to go out! WHAT DO i REALLY DO.

I'm a user who is not interrested in technical software stuff. I only want to use this machine, as for what I baught it for.

Can someone send me a link to a very good explination on how to fix the problem with softwareuninstaller, so that I maybee could take one and one program at the time when needed?
Is there a way to solve this issue without totally restore everything and installing everything all over?

I feel like screaming HEEELLLPPP. The battery issue was nothing!!!! To change a battery takes how long? U can use powercable in the meantime!

[t41user]

To PaulJo:

If you are 'not interested in technical software stuff', I think your best option to repair the problem(s) is to do a total system restore starting from factory image with (re)installation of all software and software updates. For me and many others, this took over ten hours of work. However, it may take you more than ten hours of work to learn the details required for fixing the problem piecemeal in the workings of the registry and so on.

To Bill Bolton:
I'm still curious as to how or why you defend the Lenovo statement and take Lenovo's statement to be 'the real story'. One basic complaint here is that Lenovo refused to take the link down after many users pointed out the problem to them. Rather, the more receptive, perceptive, and quicker tech people at PC-Doctor confirmed the problem after users reported it to them, and then the business people at PC-Doctor patiently tried to get the people at Lenovo to take the link down until they (PC-Doctor) could provide a corrected version of the silent installer. Why did it take Lenovo so long to respond? How many hours of unnecessary repair work did Lenovo cause their customers due to the inability of the Lenovo tech people to recognize or even just to accept the cause and nature of the problems that Lenovo customers were reporting and explaining to them?

[PaulJo]

T41user may be right in the evaluation.

You have a very goood point. On top of that I will also get a new and clean system, with a clean registry. I HATE TO ADMIT THAT YOUR RIGHT.

I also agree with you on the last part of your post. How many working hours total have this caused, and why can't they admit this fatal case from Lenovo's side.

One thing tho': If I now am to do a total restore; How many of the automated updates do I really need on my R40 modell.
I wonder if it would be possible to get Lenovo's support team to list alle the necessary versions of drivers good enough for my modell? (and maybee the direct link to them) R40 has always functioned perfect up till this software error of "PC-Doctor 50. I therefore think I don't need to upgrade to alle the latest and newest drivers. I think I will ask support this question?

Thank you for the input T41user

[t41user]

To PaulJo:

One thing you could do is look to see what versions of programs you currently have on your system. (For instance, run the programs and click on or select the 'about' prompt, or some such thing that most programs have to indicate their specific version number. ) After restoring your system, you could try to find the closest available version. In some or many cases, the older versions may no longer be available. Another thing you could do is read the accompanying text files that often provide information about changes in updated versions. If you don't need the indicated changes, you may not want to donwload and install the update. I take it that Lenovo and/or IBM try to automate this process in one way or another, doing it all for you by updating everything automatically. I never run such programs and I always try manually to select, download, and install individual items one at a time.


To Bill Bolton:

Still no defense, clarification, explanation, or revision of your earlier statement about Lenovo and the PC Doctor fiasco?

[PaulJo]

I have backup every catalog that could contain program files, settings for Cubase,and other program I use, and so on. I have a tradition to put most under My Documents, but one of the main e-mail files in Outlook cannot be mooved from the original path, so I've been searching for most of files I know I would be missing.
I had though, forgotten to think about version number! Thank you for that one!

I've copied:
-Drivers,
-windows\System32\drivers,
-IBM paths,
-programfiles\common files,
-documents and setting\(all paths)
and so on, on top of all the normal paths where all docs are stored. Is there any other systempaths I should take a copy of? (just in case) Somewhere personal programadjustements or other important stuff is stored?

Pauljo