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cxb1

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Posts posted by cxb1

  1. Well, your decisions are your own: that's fine. 

    I have no expertise in Intel or Microsoft. My expertise, however, runs in previous generations of mainframes, from the lowest level of hardware (imagine diagnosing a "once-a-month" user program failure, down to a 20ns spike on a single bit of a single arithmetic register within a mainframe the size of a built-in wardrobe, or flying to Melbourne Australia, to diagnose a random failure down to an intermittent crack in the copper track buried inside a motherboard) or "dump-cracking" - determining the failure point from the hexadecimal dump of memory and registers, through to kernel modifications, project management of software teams, product development, and ending with strategic IT decisions for a company spending $300m per year on IT alone. I don't say I am uniquely qualified to make judgement on a complex and often low-level diagnostic utility like anti-virus software: especially where it needs to operate in a hostile environment. 

    I try to be careful when I say what I say. 

    For example, over the past month, since receiving the latest Windows10 update, in the slow ring of the Insider program, I have been failing to load my notebook, first time, to the Windows login. It works on the second boot. This behaviour can be entirely eliminated by switching off Malware protection, without needing to switch off Malicious Website protection. This consistent behaviour has been tested and checked over the past 2 weeks or so. Have I raised an issue in this forum? No. Yesterday, I thought through some of the other actions I've taken in the past month: like installing a USB-Bluetooth adaptor. I've now deleted those drivers and uninstalled all their software. The system reloads with some new Intel bluetooth drivers I've never seen before. When I switch MBAM Malware protection on again, I now no longer get the load failures from before! Everything is fine!

    So I'd say this looks like a driver failure. But why is it associated with MBAM? If MBAM is finding something it "doesn't like" in low memory (for example), why isn't this reported in a diagnostic, with an option to reboot or carry on (etc)? A consumer will naturally blame MBAM for the evidenced performance of the system. 

    You know what is the worst strategic failure a company can encounter? It's not from software failure, or from cyber-insecurity. It's from the destruction of its reputation. 

    If MBAM is to operate at these low levels to help customers secure their environments, then it needs to protect ITSELF from mis-diagnosis of failure. 

    Regards,

  2. Regarding USASMA's comment, I can't let this self-congratulatory message go unchallenged (either).

    This forum is full of BSOD-type failures, starting well into mid 2015. I myself reported a BAD POOL Header failure in March (over 6 months ago), and only got another "What antivirus are you using? " - I clearly stated MBAM and Avast - "and if it's BitDefender then etc etc..." - none of it in the slightest bit relevant to the problem. Lots of "please create a minidump" and "check your drivers are uptodate" and constant reference to BitDefender - none of it relevant to me. All these BSOD problems do not indicate stable software or a clean codebase (and I've worked in IT since 1968)

    MBAM is the least stable software on my PC and laptop. No other software gives me this severity of failure. 

    So maybe congratulations will be in order in six months time, but certainly not yet.

  3. Thanks for the analysis tools, but I don't think I'll get the problem anymore; but if I do, I'll certainly use your suggestion.

    When I have my system 'stable' at last, I'm not very inclined to go back and re-create all the issues I had with Fast Start messing up the file structure integrity.

    I think the biggest issue I have, is that over the past 9 months, I'm not sure that MalwareBytes have acknowledged that THEY have a problem. I know correlation isn't causation, but the correlation of Bad Pool Headers with MalwareBytes being installed, simply drives people away from a very good product, without necessarily informing you of the reason. Thankfully, the general incidence rate doesn't appear to be so high, so it's likely to be a combination of factors. In my case, I did a clean install of Windows10Pro to an empty SSD, and I install 'defence' software quite quickly after that. The BPHs came quite soon after that. But I have a very unusual BIOS configuration. Actually, in my case, I think the real culprit is Microsoft, who have 'broken the file integrity' rules with Fast Start. People just have to code around such vandalism.....

  4. 1 hour ago, usasma said:

    Do you use BitDefender?  If so, please be sure to get the most updated version (older versions has BSOD issues).

    Sorry, was that question aimed at me?

    No, I stopped using Bit Defender some time ago. I use Avast Pro + Malwarebytes. The Bad Pool Header problems were only ever associated with MalwareBytes, and over 6 months, I kept hoping they would be fixed, but everytime I reloaded MalwareBytes and updated the software, it still had these same issues. Until I switched off Malicious Website, and now Fast Restart and Sleep (hyperfil.sys?)

  5. I've been having random Bad_Pool_Header failures when surfing the web, too. But only on one of the two systems I have.

    I think I've "fixed" the problem.

    No BPHs             Random BPHs

    System 1             System 2

    Notebook             PC

    UEFI/GPT            Classic/MBR

    Win10Pro             Win10Pro

                                Dual Boot/Linux

    AHCI                   RAID

    First discovery: it's only related to MWAC, the Malicious Website Protection service. Switch that off, and it goes away.

    Second discovery: It started in Windows 10. (after I upgraded from Win7). When I installed Windows again, on a new SSD, I still had the problem. When I re-installed Linux, I still had the problem, but I had a new problem: my Linux wouldn't recognise the NTFS windows partitions, or the RAID NTFS drives either. The file/volume structure is "incoherent", thanks to Microsoft's new FastStart, and Sleep/Restore facilities. Once I had eliminated those facilities from Win10, the Linux system happily "saw" the (coherent) NTFS drives. Since I've done that, with Malicious Website Protection now turned on again, I haven't had a single Bad Pool Header. (but maybe next week.....). Normally I would have got at least 1 per day.

    Regards, 

  6. Yes, I get the same thing (I think). Bad_Pool_Header failures on my PC, but not on my laptop.

     

    The PC is older, Intel G45, running Win 10, ATI graphics, BitLocker, a BIOS RAID on the Intel chip ICH6R, a mix of SSDs and Disks, Avast and MBAM Premium

    The laptop is newer, Intel Core i5-4200U, running Win 10, Intel chip graphics, BitLocker, no raid, Avast and MBAM Premium.

     

    The Bad_Pool_header failure is intermittent, but predictably 2-4 times a day, usually while on the Internet (Firefox, NoScript + AdBlock Plus).

     

    Removing MBAM Premium on the PC has resulted in no failures in the past 5 days.

    Of course, the fix might come from Microsoft, rather than MalwareBytes.

     

    The Bad_Pool_Header results in a long session of "collecting info for Microsoft", which I've usually cut short by physically rebooting my system - I'm disinclined to allow anyone to collect any info they see fit.

     

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