exile360

Excellent, I'm glad that it's working soundly now Yes, it sounds likely that the original driver was probably still loaded into memory when you initially rebooted, resulting in the BSOD on shutdown (I guess it had to get in one final crash before giving up the ghost), but hopefully it is resolved now. Please let us know if you do encounter any further issues though. Thanks

See, that's a fair assessment and reasonable argument, however the argument from the previous article you linked about deliberately blacklisting IE just for the sake of attempting to force users to upgrade/use an alternative is bogus and poor advice in my opinion. He's stating the exact reasons that I no longer use IE as my browser any longer and haven't for some time now, not because of some artificial barrier, but because it is dated and lacks certain modern features compared to more current browsers, and such are the reasons that people should upgrade to something else, not because some snobbish webdev on some website 'said so'. It is the difference between using what is needed and letting others dictate what you use based on their opinions. It's like buying a new car every 3~5 years as car dealerships and manufacturers would prefer. Planned obsolescence is a silly reason to replace anything if it is still functional and adequate for its purpose, however as I already mentioned, IE11 is badly out of date now so I don't know why you're posting information about web standards and all that. I've already said I don't use it nor do I recommend its use to anyone else. I was simply stating the reasons I disagreed with the stance of one particular individual who's article you cited, not because getting off of IE is a bad idea, but because his proposed approach for doing so and reasoning is flawed and just plain wrong.

Thanks for the confirmation, I figured they were doing something like that.

Greetings, I'm sorry that you have experienced these issues, however they should be corrected by the latest beta. If you would, please install the beta by following the guidance provided in this post and test to verify that the issues are resolved and let us know how it goes and if you experience any further problems or issues. Thanks

Greetings, While you may not wish to upgrade to the latest version of Malwarebytes, version 4.0, version 2.2 is extremely outdated and incompatible with the vast majority of signatures used for targeting most current threats by the Malwarebytes Research team. This means that while you will still receive database updates, your version of Malwarebytes will be incapable of detecting a very large number of threats that more recent versions of Malwarebytes can using the same databases/signatures. At the very least I would advise upgrading to version 3.8 which is the last version before version 4.0. It is substantially improved over version 2.2 and includes a new detection engine, new protection modules, and many new features and protection and detection capabilities. If you would like to upgrade to version 3.8 you can download it here. You can either remove version 2.2 then install version 3 or simply install version 3 over the top of your existing installation, however it will likely prompt you to restart your system to complete the process either way. Beyond that, if there is some specific issue with Malwarebytes 4 that you are having which is preventing you from upgrading, please let us know as it is probably an issue that we can either fix or provide guidance to you in working around it. With all of that said, if you are still determined to remain on version 2.2 then you will need to disable the option for Malwarebytes to check for and download new program updates when checking for database updates. This option should be somewhere under settings. Additionally, you may need to delete a registry value stating that a new program update is pending. I believe this entry exists under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Malwarebytes, however it may be somewhere under the current user's registry hive such as HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Malwarebytes. Once you've found the correct location you should see an entry that says something similar to 'new version pending' or 'upgrade pending', possibly naming a path to the installer which points to somewhere similar to C:\ProgramData\Malwarebytes\MBAMService and showing the name of a setup EXE installer file (something along the lines of mbam-setup.exe or similar). If you find this entry, either change the value to False if it currently says True or delete the path\file info if it just lists a path to the upgrade installer. You will also need to delete the downloaded installer for the new version which should exist somewhere under Malwarebytes' ProgramData folder. You will likely need to first exit Malwarebytes before attempting and of this as self-protection in Malwarebytes will likely prevent making any of these changes or deletions, however once the change is made you should be able to then restart your system and the alerts should be gone, and as long as you changed the setting for Malwarebytes not to download new program versions when checking for database updates, it should not return. I apologize that I cannot be more specific, however many changes have been made to Malwarebytes and how new version alerts and upgrades work since version 2.2 so I'm working mostly from memory. If you still aren't able to accomplish what you are trying to do then please do the following and we will do our best to assist you in eliminating the alerts: Download and run the Malwarebytes Support Tool Accept the EULA and click Advanced tab on the left (not Start Repair) Click the Gather Logs button, and once it completes, attach the zip file it creates on your desktop to your next reply Please let us know how it goes and provide the requested ZIP file if necessary to receive further assistance. Thanks

There are many .info sites that have been whitelisted already, and I'm certain the Research team has also whitelisted many prominent .info sites (as well as sites using other filtered TLD's) on their own, and I'm sure that at least some of the sites you linked are among them, though I don't know for certain that all of them are.

See, I HATE when someone makes a statement like this. They don't give a single valid reason for stopping support for IE11 for websites/servers. Instead, they make a call to arms for all webdevs of the world to artificially put an end to IE support by simply forcing a flag on their sites to dictate that IE is incompatible. This is not the same thing as software becoming obsolete due to a lack of compatibility, standards or features/requirements. It is the same kind of crap that Microsoft tried to pull with Windows update in Windows 7 with modern CPUs. Architecturally there is absolutely 0 difference whatsoever between a CPU created in the year 2014 vs one of the latest Intel or AMD chips that came out just this year, nor will there be any difference in the chips that come out next year or the year after that with regards to OS and application compatibility; if there were, then those new CPUs would require an OS even newer than Windows 10 or any existing build of Linux available right now. I would understand if IE11 had some fundamental flaw or missing core features/APIs etc. that made it more difficult to support than say Chrome or Firefox, however if the only reason a given site might not work with IE is because the dev that coded the page put in an extra javascript string to deliberately check the user's browser and report that the site cannot function if the returned value is IE11, than that is just total BS, period. I am not saying that anyone should go out of their way to support a deprecated browser or operating system, however if all you have to do to continue to support it is LITERALLY NOTHING, and in order to stop supporting it you have to actually put in ADDITIONAL EFFORT to specifically and DELIBERATELY break it, then that is just foolishness. It is the same reason that I have been arguing for so long that Windows 7 will likely be supported by applications for a long time to come in the future, simply because there is nothing in Windows 10 with regards to general APIs and application compatibility that Windows 7 doesn't already fully support natively out of the box, so short of something like Microsoft pushing a new version of .NET and preventing it from installing on 7 and every developer in the world suddenly switching to .NET, it just isn't likely to happen. This is why Malwareybtes continues to work on 7, why most applications still do, and why most will continue to do so in the future, at least until either a new major build of 10 ships that absolutely breaks backwards compatibility (including with applications that functioned on previous builds of Windows 10, not just 7), or they insert an OS version check to artificially prevent the installation of the application on Windows 7 (the same tactic MS is using to prevent updates on newer CPUs in 7; something which can easily be bypassed with the right tools). With all of that said, I am NOT saying that anyone should stay on 7 or IE11 because they absolutely should not. It's a 10+ year old OS and a 6+ year old browser (not accounting for updates, patches and service packs of course) and users are generally far better off using more modern software. I just despise the idea of developers trying to dictate what software and/or hardware a user/customer may use by creating artificial requirements and barriers with no basis in reality. It's like building a new road and telling everyone that they are not allowed to drive on it if their car is older than the year 2016. It's stupid and makes absolutely no sense because a car from 1993 is just as capable of driving on any road that a car from 2020 fresh off the assembly line can. Computer hardware and software is in most cases quite similar and there are only a few special cases where this is not true, especially when comparing IE11 to Chrome or Firefox, or Windows 7 to Windows 10.

Greetings, If the order still fails to complete please try a different browser to see if that resolves the issue. If it does not then please contact Malwarebytes Support by filling out the form on the bottom of this page and they will assist you further. In the meantime I will also make a note of the issue you encountered with the purchase page for the Product team to investigate. To that end, if you could provide us with a few basic details by running the following tool and posting back the resulting ZIP file it would be most helpful: Download and run the Malwarebytes Support Tool Accept the EULA and click Advanced tab on the left (not Start Repair) Click the Gather Logs button, and once it completes, attach the zip file it creates on your desktop to your next reply Thanks

Assuming all of the Event Viewer entries show the same faulting module (MwacLib.dll) then it could be the same or similar to the MWAC.sys related BSOD's/crashes that are supposed to be addressed in the beta. If the crash is causing the parent service (MBAMService.exe) to crash in the process, that would cause all 4 protection modules to fail/be disabled as well. It might be that on your system the situation just presents itself differently, crashing the application rather than causing a full on BSOD. I'd definitely recommend giving the beta a try to see if it resolves it, and I bet it will. Either way it couldn't hurt.

I'm really going to miss IE. IE10/11 was such a different animal compared to the less contemporary, less secure iterations of IE that preceded it, and to this day I still have yet to find any browser from any vendor that even comes close to rivaling the level of customization and control over settings (many of which are related to security, enabling knowledgeable users to lock down the browser to a much greater extent than is possible in other browsers without large numbers of third party plugins and extensions, and even then, with so many of the settings being core to the browser's internal functions even third party extensions cannot accomplish what many of those settings could do for privacy and security). I doubt we'll ever again see a browser like IE. Everything is far too dumbed down these days, with only basic settings and options being exposed to users. IE11 was a far cry from the much maligned IE6 of the past that gave IE its longstanding bad reputation. IE11 is also the fastest browser by a long shot, at least compared to both Chrome and Firefox, at least in all my experience and testing. It launches faster and loads individual and multiple pages/tabs more quickly. It also tends to be much lighter on CPU and RAM when running in the background, especially compared to Chrome which tends to eat RAM like a starving man at an all-you-can-eat buffet. That said, time and web standards move on, and while IE 11 was a huge step towards embracing modern web standards, it still had lots of legacy code within that Microsoft is better off abandoning and starting fresh with a new codebase (one big reason it really doesn't surprise me that they've chosen to adopt a popular open source solution in Chromium for their latest browser). ActiveX needs to die due to the security risks it exposes, an issue that also exists to some extent with certain features and extensions in other browsers such as push notifications (a feature that should never have been created) and the innumerable PUP plugins/extensions that exist for Firefox and especially Chrome, though perhaps not to the same extent as ActiveX. I do imagine that I can't be alone in my thinking though, and I suspect that it won't be too long before we see some creative developer come along with a new browser that embraces the more efficient, user-focused aspects of browsers like IE with a big focus on privacy, security and performance and mops the floor with the countless Mozilla and Chrome clones out there (including Microsoft's own Chromium based Edge browser which recently launched), however I don't know how much of a niche in the market there is for such a thing, but I will definitely be keeping my eyes and ears open to see what develops down the road because the existing top browsers are far too bloated for their own good, especially with mobile computing and low powered chips becoming the norm, both in the form of smart phones as well as the dramatic increase in laptop and tablet sales we've seen over the past several years. I know I'm not the only one who sees that my web browser is almost always at the very top of the list of processes consuming RAM and CPU, even when it's doing nothing but sitting in the background with a few tabs open, not streaming any video or rendering any dynamic/animated content (and it's even worse if you also monitor your GPU/graphics usage as I do, in real-time, one major reason I won't ever leave a browser open while gaming unless I absolutely have to).

Greetings, Unfortunately I do not believe there is a way to whitelist entire TLD's at the moment; blocking them is basically like a heuristic rule built into the extension.

Greetings, I believe those files are backups of all of the user and system registry hives for the system. They are used when Malwarebytes is scanning and also I believe when it first loads protection, however I believe it is supposed to clean them up automatically however I have seen instances where it did not and the files stacked resulting in the behavior you describe. I will make a note of this issue for the Product team for analysis as it may be a bug. In the meantime we will wait for someone from the staff to chime in as they will likely have a more definitive answer. Thanks

That depends; if they have upgraded the underlying SDK in version 1.8 to the same one being used in Malwarebytes 4 then it doesn't matter, however if they have not then it may potentially have substantial limitations compared to Malwarebytes 4 with regards to the supported heuristics, detection logic and overall detection capabilities (older engines ignore threat detection signatures that they do not understand in order to prevent breaking older versions/engines with database updates and to guard against unpredictable behavior and potential FP's). Of course that all depends on what changes have been made in the engine and how heavily the Malwarebytes Research team is leaning on using newer signature types vs the existing/legacy types for targeting contemporary threats.

Yes, I was referencing the Managed Client build. Thanks for the clarification

While I certainly agree on some of your points, most Windows applications (and frankly, none of the many AV/AM/AS applications I've used or tested throughout the years) do not allow this, at least through normal means of selecting text within a UI to copy/paste it (there are some functions such as copying the contents of generic Windows system message boxes/modal dialogues using CTRL+C, however this does not work in most AV/AM applications, at least the ones I've used/tested). That said, I would like more standard functions for truncating/expanding columns and other data in lists and tables in the UI. It is a major shortcoming that has been brought up numerous times to the Product team that double-clicking the space between any column header should automatically resize the column below to match the length of the longest string/entry within the column. That alone would alleviate many headaches when dealing with things like scan results and exclusions which often contain long strings/paths/entries. I don't know if it is an issue with QT or just the current implementation, however it is an issue I would very much like to see addressed and hopefully it will be soon.

I thought they were killing the apps to make everything online only/cloud based. That's why I was concerned, because as I mentioned in my first reply, it is an industry trend that I find quite frustrating.

I really cannot say as I don't use such apps. I use some extensions/plugins but that's about it, so I really don't know what impact moving all packaged hosted apps to PWA's and/or browser extensions will have. I guess you'd have to ask someone who uses them on a regular basis or investigate what the impact will be on some of the more commonly used ones to gauge how it will affect users of these apps and what it will mean for them going forward.

Greetings, I was not aware of any current issues with Bitdefender, however I will make a note of this for the Product team for analysis. Specifically with regards to the Kaspersky issue, unfortunately it was actually caused by a change made in the most recent versions of Kaspersky's products, not any changes made in Malwarebytes. This means that it is most likely up to Kaspersky Labs' developers to resolve this issue and I know that the Malwarebytes team has already reached out to them to attempt to get this issue corrected so hopefully a fix is forthcoming. For the purposes of troubleshooting the Bitdefender, if you would please do the following so that the Malwarebytes QA team and Developers have as much information about this issue as possible in order to attempt to replicate it and track down a fix: Download and run the Malwarebytes Support Tool Accept the EULA and click Advanced tab on the left (not Start Repair) Click the Gather Logs button, and once it completes, attach the zip file it creates on your desktop to your next reply Thanks

I think it's a good thing that they are implementing offline functionality. That makes them a lot more flexible since they don't require an internet connection to be used. I mean it makes perfect sense for a browser plugin or dedicated web app to require internet connectivity, but for many of the Google apps I'm sure that they are just general applications that don't necessarily have a good reason to require an active internet connection to work. Heck, even many functions of a web browser, including those based on Chromium, don't necessarily require internet access to function or be useful. For example, I haven't installed Adobe Reader in ages because PDF files can be opened/read natively in SRWare Iron (the Chromium based browser I use as my primary browser). I associate .PDF files with Iron so that any time I download and/or launch a PDF it opens in my browser so that I can read it. It comes in quite handy. The same is true for many other formats such as GIF (which opens in IE by default), .WBEM files (web based video files which, I believe, are based on HTML5), XML, XPS and many others. Reading/opening these file types doesn't require internet connectivity, nor does the viewing of offline web format files such as HTML.

Greetings, It likely depends on when you purchased your license, however you should be able to sign into My.Malwarebytes.com to check and see which devices each license is installed on and the name of each. The names should be the same as the computer name I believe. If you don't already have an account at My.Malwarebytes.com you can sign up for one using, if possible, the same email address you used when you originally purchased your license(s) as this will make it much easier to sync up your account with your licenses/subscriptions. Instructions on signing up can be found in this support article and further details on managing your licenses and devices can be found in this support article. I hope this helps, but please let us know if you have any trouble and we will do our best to assist. Thanks

Yeah, I hear you. BSOD's frankly terrify me, and I've been a PC repair tech for years, so I know how to fix PC's. I've seen too many corrupted operating systems and even the occasional hardware failure (though rare in the case of the latter) due to BSOD's/crashes, so I don't blame you at all for wanting to avoid them. Thankfully it looks like the Devs finally have a handle on this issue so it should be resolved in their next upcoming release, at least according to most of the users who were impacted by the BSOD issue who have tested it so far. Hopefully this will be the case for you as well so that you can upgrade to the latest without having to worry about your system crashing.

Ah, gotcha. Yes, many software vendors seem to be going this route, requiring users/customers to have an always online internet connection. It is quite frustrating, especially for apps that really have no reason to require an internet connection in order to function (single player games, office applications and other utility type apps etc.) and generally there are only 2 primary reasons that a software vendor will require an active internet connection for such applications: for the purposes of licensing/DRM (this is the reason most video games now require an internet connection, even single player games with no online or multiplayer content), and/or for the sake of telemetry/data mining (the latter of which being the primary reason I won't use any of Googles applications or browser, and also one of the primary reasons I refuse to downgrade to Windows 10 since it continues to gather telemetry/user data even when all options provided in the OS to control this functionality are configured not to).

It also shouldn't be launching on every boot. When used for a clean uninstall the Support Tool is only supposed to launch once on the first system restart to attempt to reinstall Malwarebytes. If it is launching on every boot then it might be due to the fast startup feature in Windows 10. You can try disabling fast startup to see if that corrects the issue as fast startup has been known to cause issues with Malwarebytes and many other applications and drivers. Instructions on doing so can be found here as well as here. Once fast startup is disabled, verify that the Support Tool no longer launches on system start.

Never mind what I said; I misunderstood and thought you were saying that the Support Tool was launching on every reboot, but no, it isn't normal for it to take 30 minutes for your system to restart either. It definitely sounds like it got hung up for some reason. You might need to hold down the power button on the machine to force it to shut down, then start it back up and verify that it is working normally, waiting a couple of minutes to allow everything to finish loading, then restarting it one more time to make sure it isn't hanging up any more when doing so.

The Support Tool shouldn't be starting on boot, however if fast startup is enabled in Windows that could account for it. You can try disabling fast startup as detailed here as well as here to see if that resolves the issue. The fast startup feature in Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10 has been known to cause startup issues with Malwarebytes and other applications and drivers. If you used the tool to perform a clean uninstall it is set to launch on reboot to attempt to reinstall Malwarebytes, however if fast startup is enabled it may be that it is repeating instead of running just once like it is supposed to due to the way that fast startup works.