robhab

I started getting Amazon AWS phishing website block notices this morning - groups of 2 every hour or so. Ten so far starting at 8:35 am this morning. The IP address appears to be a valid Amazon address. No online activity whatsoever to explain sudden phishing. Note that Windows shows that Google Chrome auto updated just prior to the start of these notices. Very annoying and troubling. MWB Premium reports... nothing. What should I do now?

There appears to be two different themes playing out in this thread: 1. Discussions concerning a technical fix for the freeze problem caused by Malwarebytes (MB) - which is the intended original purpose of this thread 2. Opinions about how MB staff has handled/mishandled the problem so far - essentially a customer service and PR debate that is also a valid customer concern. Both themes are very important to MB and its customers. I am confident the Ms. Elena Verna (SVP, Product & Growth) and Mr. Raj Mallempati (SVP of Marketing) at MB are keenly interested in customer opinion and how this particular problem is affecting MB's reputation and future sales. I would like to add my personal comments on the customer service aspects that directly affected me, and my evolving impression of the company as it wrestles with this most difficult fix. I think thoughtful comments may be helpful. However, I don't want to muck up the technical discussion here. Further, the technical folks at MB, who are responding to technical comments here, are exactly the wrong folks to be responding to consumer concerns/rants. That job takes a special skill set not often found among programmers. Could the forum moderators please start a separate thread to discuss customer opinion on how this freeze problem has been handled by the company so far. And direct those comments to the second thread. This way, the two themes can be separated. If the moderators are not comfortable doing this, I am happy to start the second topic thread - just point me to the right place in this forum. Thanks - and good luck on the fix.

LAVA may have a good point. I initially thought the MSE virus definitions were to blame, but thinking back, I think the MBAM malware definitions may have been updating at the same time just before my first freeze.

When did the freeze first start occurring? - Dec 20, 2018 early morning What were you doing on the computer immediately prior to the latest freeze? - Nothing - the tower was seemingly idle Did you notice anything significant occur around the time of the latest freeze (e.g. AV notification, application crash, etc)? - MSE virus definitions had just auto updated Has a freeze occurred when the computer is idle? - Yes Have you noticed a correlation between high network traffic and the computer freezing? - No correlation How often does the computer freeze? several times a day until I disabled MBAM Premium Are you able to reproduce the freeze on-demand? If the answer is yes, what are the steps? - no, but I did not really try to intentionally freeze my system because it has a critical function How old is the computer? - 4 yrs old - a high end custom Falcon Northwest Mach V tower Was the computer upgraded from XP/Vista to Windows 7? - NO! the system has been running the same Win Pro 64 bit OS that came already installed on the tower . I would rather buy a new system than suffer through an OS upgrade Is the computer fully up-to-date with Windows Updates? Which updates have been installed after the first freeze occurred? - NO! stopped updating Win 7 about 3 yrs ago after three episodes where Win Update bricked my tower. Flat brick dead requiring assistance from Falcon. IMO the OS updates are worst than malware they are supposed to prevent. NO WIN OS updates were installed, but MSE virus definitions were just auto updated. Nothing else - no drivers, no Chrome updates, nada Does the computer have multiple network adapters? If it does, what happens when you disable the adapter currently in use and switch to a different adapter? NO - just one adapter I hope this helps and good luck Rob

I do not have Avast installed (only MSE), and yet I have the exact same freezing problem that started the same time (and right after Microsoft updated the virus definitions in MSE). The freezing problem stopped when I deactivated MBAM Web Protection. Logic indicates that the problem is not exclusive to Avast (or Norton). Likewise, I have a different network adapter than reported by others with this problem. Again, this indicates that a particular network adapter is not the cause of this problem.

I have used Malwarebytes non-premium version for many years and I greatly appreciate the various anti-malware resources that MB has provided for free. Thank you MB. The cost of the premium version is trivial when you consider the value. However, my time and piece-of-mind is not trivial. I only happened to discover the freeze conflict with Malwarebytes Premium by chance, and it still took me a couple of days to confirm after searching the web and some trial-and-error. The holiday period actually helped because I had some free time to investigate. Luckily, the problem was obvious and simple to uncover, which has not been the case in the past. Like several other posters, I was just about to go down some software and hardware rabbit holes that would have been unnecessary and painful, but stopped short mostly due to the forums, which were crucial in this case. Doctors promise to "first do no harm." This should apply to MS updates and anti-malware as well. This has got to be an awful problem to fix. I am skeptical but hopeful that MB will eventually fix it. Good luck.

You requested the Network adapter in use when the freeze occurs... Intel(R) I211 Gigabit Network Connection

I do not allow Microsoft Win 7 pro 64 updates to my system as a matter of policy after three separate auto updates bricked my system. However I do allow MSE updates... and the freezes on my system started after the MSE virus definitions were updated. I don't know if this is significant, but thought I should report it.

JimOPI That is exactly what happened to me at exactly the same time under exactly the same Win and app configuration. If you check your logs closely, you will see that MSE updated its virus definitions just before the seemingly random freeze started. You probably caused the first freeze when you booted up and both MBAM and MSE tried to run at the same time.

dcollins I appreciate the effort behind your request, but I am really torn in two directions here. I would like to help you out, but I cannot afford to screw up my system again. I am reluctant to run your scripts to intentionally force my system to lock up. Who will help me unscramble the mess, if I cannot hard reboot my system? In the 34 years that I have been using PCs, first for my graduate work and then for my professional practice, I never had a single system crash caused by malware. In that same period, Microsoft updates bricked my PCs three times; and Norton updates bricked them twice. I stopped buying systems from Dell, because of the problems with McAfee... For me, the cure has been worse than the disease. Enormously inconvenient and aggravating. I may be better off just giving up on MBAM for now.

I am a brand new first time forum member. I have been using Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) on a Win 7 Pro 64 tower PC since it was purchased in 2015 . Also, I have been using MBAM for manual scans, and a few months ago, I upgraded to the premium version running real time. Everything was fine until Dec 20, 2018 at 7:23 am when I found my PC totally non responsive (frozen). I had to do a hardware reboot, and the normal restart procedure worked fine. Then the system suffered three seemingly random system freezes all requiring hard reboots... prompting me to backup all files and carefully investigate the system. I could not find in malware - but who really knows these days? I found several online references to a conflict between MBAM and MSE when both programs scan in real time. After checking some file dates, I noticed that MSE had auto-updated its definition file just before the problem started. So I tried to run a manual MSE scan and the system froze. Sigh... I deactivated the real time scanning in MBAM and the freezing stopped. I think there is a conflict. So now what? I would like to restore MBAM to real time scanning, but cannot afford to have the system down or unrecoverable. I am not Windows software expert either. I searched the forum and searched online, but none of the proffered advice fits exactly (and I am loath to do anything that is not exactly has described). I would like to try the file exclusion idea in MBAM and MSE, but the listed files are not found under the listed directory locations. Can some one explain what files to exclude and where they are are in my older Win 7 Pro 64 system? Thank you and Happy Holidays.