Vortex.exe deleted itself

[Pickysaurus]

We are seeing a lot of reports of this happening. 1.2.14+ changed the internal structure of the app a little so Windows Defender has started seeing it as a new, potentially dangerous app. Of course this is a false positive, but we can't stop the software from deleting either the new modules or the entire Vortex.exe file. We can only wait for Microsoft to realise it's not actually a threat.

[dekarserverbot]

this is happening with all unity applications too, it's stupid but whatever, just reinstall each time you want to run it again

[HadToRegister]

this is happening with all unity applications too, it's stupid but whatever, just reinstall each time you want to run it again

 

 

Or....change your AV program or stop using Windows Defender, because obviously it's something on your system that's doing it, especially if it's also deleting unrelated programs.

[Zanderat]

Does WIndows Defender have the capability to white list a program, like any decent av worth anything?

[Pickysaurus]

It's strange, it only seems to be impacting a small sample of users. None of the Windows users on the Nexus Mods staff have seen this happen.

[beebophuckleberry]

I use Windows Defender, CCleaner, and Malwarebytes... I've NEVER had this issue with Vortex.

 

Just a thought, do you guys have UAC turned on so that it alerts you when a program makes a change?

 

Link to instructions for changing UAC settings; https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/user-help/you-need-to-enable-uac-windows

 

Dunno if that will help, but it might.

[chaosbrand]

Had this suddenly happen to me too. I had my Vortex installed in my HDD (E:), and from what I can tell, the update installed itself in my SSD (C:), and removed the executable from E:. Not sure if this is what is happening with everyone else, but I do have the Vortex directory folders in both my drive C: and E:.

[Tannin42]

The Vortex installer usually figures out where your existing installation is and installs there but it does require the registry keys it created (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\57979c68-f490-55b8-8fed-8b017a5af2fe) to find the existing installation.

 

If you or any software you use (e.g. ccleaner) removes that registry key, the next Vortex installation (update or not) will think it's the first install and install to the default location (because the updater is really just the one-click installer).

 

I don't think this is the same problem as what the other people posting here are encountering.

 

The most common cause of the exe being deleted is the AV, and it's really not an obscure problem, AV tools are known to produce false positives, it's a very common problem and it usually happens only shortly after a new version was released. Once a certain number of users have downloaded and installed successfully, they will whitelist the application.

You may reduce the chance of being affected by making sure you keep your AV (and the virus definition files) updated.

 

I say "the most common" but for all I know it's all of the cases but obviously it's hard to rule out that there might be another problem causing the same issue but so far no one has reported anything that would indicate that.

[Manway]

This also just happened to me, I'm not saying it's not my AV or Defender, but I can't prove that it is because I can't find a log of any action taken anywhere. My AV is AVG and I have a list of false positives in quarantine, Blizzard's launcher for example, but Vortex is not in there. I also searched through Windows Event viewer to see if Defender did something. I'm no expert at searching the massive list that Event Viewer keeps track of, but as far as I can tell, there are a few logs about Vortex, but the most recent one was days ago, I was using Vortex just fine up until last night.

 

If someone can offer some help so I can find evidence that it was AVG or Defender please let me know so I can see if a local whitelist option is available.....otherwise I'm with everyone else, Vortex deleted itself :tongue:

[Reumakipu]

Happened to me as well, UAC pop up came when I closed the program. Nothing happened after that, just saw my desktop and taskbar shortcuts turn to some default system icons. My OS is Windows 7 Professional 64.