Malwarebytes Update = Severe XP issues

[Markgc]

Yes my Dell machine that was locked up by malwarebytes is running XP Home SP2. So it is not specifically an SP3 issue.

Mark

[TheWatchMan]

Hi,

Well it seems I'm not the only one having this problem but mine has a NEW TWIST......

*I am using a Dell XPS 400, Windows XP SP3

*ZA free 10.1.065.000

*Avira Free Antivirus

I have been running MB Pro for a little less than a year now, and today it updated and installed the new version and when the computer restarted, it boots to the desktop and and freezes.... The desktop shows a pop-up balloon saying my MB is out of date and needs to update, it also show my Avira AV in the OFF mode (umbrella closed) and it does NOT show ZA started.

I can move the mouse cursor around on the desktop but I can't "click" on anything, if I move the cursor down to try to right/left click on the MB icon I get the busy/hourglass cursor but it never changes, it's ALWAYS busy.....

HERE'S THE NEW TWIST:

I have to do the hard restart and when I press F12 to attempt to boot into "SAFE MODE" I get a screen that says the following:

Boot Device Menu

* Onboard or USB CD-ROM Drive

* Onboard SATA Hard Drive

* System Setup

* Hard Drive Diagnostics

* Boot to Utility Partion

I don't have ANY OPTION for booting into safe mode...?????

So I can't go in and turn off ZA OR MB; could someone please offer me any suggestions on what to do?

Thanks for ANY ideas because I'm pretty much stranded at this point.

[arch1]

Done more research:

Tried Comodo Firewall with malwarebytes 1.60 on XP SP2

Seems like they were plucking each others strings.

CPU usage was quite high mbamservice was kicking to 60%

Cfp was at 27% in sync with mbamservice back and forth.

Could not turn off protection and got a error at shutdown often.

Uninstalled Cfp and mbamservice returned to 4% CPU

and no more error at shutdown.

With MBAM uninstalled Cfp ran at about 6%.

Avast seems to be out of the picture.

Thanks

arch1

[arch1]

Hi,

Well it seems I'm not the only one having this problem but mine has a NEW TWIST......

*I am using a Dell XPS 400, Windows XP SP3

*ZA free 10.1.065.000

*Avira Free Antivirus

I have been running MB Pro for a little less than a year now, and today it updated and installed the new version and when the computer restarted, it boots to the desktop and and freezes.... The desktop shows a pop-up balloon saying my MB is out of date and needs to update, it also show my Avira AV in the OFF mode (umbrella closed) and it does NOT show ZA started.

I can move the mouse cursor around on the desktop but I can't "click" on anything, if I move the cursor down to try to right/left click on the MB icon I get the busy/hourglass cursor but it never changes, it's ALWAYS busy.....

HERE'S THE NEW TWIST:

I have to do the hard restart and when I press F12 to attempt to boot into "SAFE MODE" I get a screen that says the following:

Boot Device Menu

* Onboard or USB CD-ROM Drive

* Onboard SATA Hard Drive

* System Setup

* Hard Drive Diagnostics

* Boot to Utility Partion

I don't have ANY OPTION for booting into safe mode...?????

So I can't go in and turn off ZA OR MB; could someone please offer me any suggestions on what to do?

Thanks for ANY ideas because I'm pretty much stranded at this point.

Safemode should be F8. Must be quick though.

Have a good day!!

arch1

[Peakeen]

Hi,

Well it seems I'm not the only one having this problem but mine has a NEW TWIST......

...

HERE'S THE NEW TWIST:

I have to do the hard restart and when I press F12 to attempt to boot into "SAFE MODE" I get a screen that says the following:

...

So I can't go in and turn off ZA OR MB; could someone please offer me any suggestions on what to do?

Thanks for ANY ideas because I'm pretty much stranded at this point.

It's F8 for safe mode not F12.

However what I had to do was boot the original installation CD and enter R for the recovery console. When eventually you get into a DOS environment enter the command disable MBAMService

You should then be able to boot, login and uninstall MBAM

It's worth noting for the moderators that I have used MBAM for a couple of years, but only for on-demand scans every week or two. Therefore I believe MBAMservice should not have started at boot or login. In fact it was the appearance of the "M" system-tray icon just before everything came to a grinding halt that alerted me to what was wrong.

Good luck - happy new year!

[TheWatchMan]

To arch1 and Peakeen:

I can't thank you guys enough!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It worked

My computer did not show an F8 option, but as soon as I pressed F8 I got the screen for Safe Mode and have been able to uninstall my MB program.

I am going to wait and monitor this list before I try to reinstall ANY version of it.

Once again, thank you guy's so very very much!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have a safe and happy New Year.

God Bless,

TheWatchMan

[Maurice Naggar]

<kibbitz>

arch1 Thank you for the added info.

Peaken Kudos on the tip

Happy New Year to all 3 of you, and to all here at the forum.

[southerniowaguy]

I have a computer service and repair business in southern Iowa and have recommended Malwarebytes anti-malware to all my customers. Your recent update has caused all of the customers using Windows XP to uninstall and no longer use your program because it freezes the computer and requires the program to be removed in safe mode. What a disaster. The only common factor with all of them is that they all use Avast 6.0 free, some use Zone Alarm free firewall....but just a handful of folks....

[al9628]

I bought 6 copies of Malwarebytes.

#1 Vista 32 Acer desktop no problem

#2 Vista 64 Dell desktop no problem

#3 Dell Vostro Windows XP AVG 2012 free version, zone alarm free version and , Malwarebytes latest version no problem.

ID and Key entered and it froze. I rebooted the laptop logged in and still got stuck.

I went into safe mode and uninstalled Malwarebytes using the recommended clean mbam utility, reboot then logged in using an administrator account and reinstalled Malwarebytes. I followed the thread mentioning that I exclude Malwarebytes files: mbam.exe, mbam.sys and some other files, excluded the Malwarebytes folder in AVG. Then I entered the ID and Key: the laptop froze. Rebooted and still froze at the point that icons start appearing to the left of the clock (right lower corner).

Definitely some compatibility problem in the latest version.

[al9628]

Reinstalled 1.51.2.1300 and it's working so far.

[ArchieAA1]

Hi,

Well it seems I'm not the only one having this problem but mine has a NEW TWIST......

*I am using a Dell XPS 400, Windows XP SP3

*ZA free 10.1.065.000

*Avira Free Antivirus

I have been running MB Pro for a little less than a year now, and today it updated and installed the new version and when the computer restarted, it boots to the desktop and and freezes.... The desktop shows a pop-up balloon saying my MB is out of date and needs to update, it also show my Avira AV in the OFF mode (umbrella closed) and it does NOT show ZA started.

I can move the mouse cursor around on the desktop but I can't "click" on anything, if I move the cursor down to try to right/left click on the MB icon I get the busy/hourglass cursor but it never changes, it's ALWAYS busy.....

HERE'S THE NEW TWIST:

I have to do the hard restart and when I press F12 to attempt to boot into "SAFE MODE" I get a screen that says the following:

Boot Device Menu

* Onboard or USB CD-ROM Drive

* Onboard SATA Hard Drive

* System Setup

* Hard Drive Diagnostics

* Boot to Utility Partion

I don't have ANY OPTION for booting into safe mode...?????

So I can't go in and turn off ZA OR MB; could someone please offer me any suggestions on what to do?

Thanks for ANY ideas because I'm pretty much stranded at this point.

With the dells f12 allows you to boot from a CD. You need to hit f8 to access the windows boot menu.

Archie

[melvin_deal]

Reinstalled 1.51.2.1300 and it's working so far.

Please elaborate! Did you do a clean install after removing the bits on uninstall of Mbam?

And if so, what uninstallation tool did you use?

Sincerely,

-Mel

Live long and prosper!

[melvin_deal]

Please elaborate! Did you do a clean install after removing the bits on uninstall of Mbam?

And if so, what uninstallation tool did you use?

When re-booting... continuously and repeatedly press the f8 The windows safe mode (nothing to do with Dell, is what you want!!

Sincerely,

-Mel

Live long and prosper!

[melvin_deal]

The response I gave was inadequate.

The post was to two different users... one concerning the install of Mbam by al9628. The other to ArchieAA1 concerning the usage of the f8 key.

-Mel

This overlying issue concerns MANY users who will help it to be resolved!!!

[Nikanj]

I too started to exprience frequent desktop freezes etc. when my pro version of Malwarebytes was updated to version 1.6 a couple of days ago.

I'm currently using:

Windows XP with SP3

Zone Alarm Extreme Security ver 9.3.037.000

which includes

Truevector security engine ver 9.3.037.000

Driver Version 9.1.522.000

AV/ASW engine version 8.0.2.48

Antispam version 6.0.0.2383

Browser Security 41.5.152.14

I originally thought the desktop freeze-ups were a further symptom of a possible infection I may have (I'd posted an as yet unreplied to request for assistance in the Hijack this logs forum - the dds log included with my Dec 27th post was generated when I still had malwarebytes ver 1.51.2.1300 installed.) The day after posting the log, I updated to the newly released MB version 1.6 to see if it could shed some light on the alerts I was getting from ZoneAlarm. Shortly thereafter the freeze-ups began.

In my case, when the freeze-up occurs (sometimes right after a computer re-start, other times a few minutes after a re-boot, and in two instances a little over a hour after re-boot), the mouse cursor can still be moved freely around the desktop but it cannot highlight, select or enagage any of the icons on either the desktop or task bar. The desktop clock is frozen but the clock on my logitec keyboard remains active and current. During one of my trouble-shooting attempts after the freezes first appeared, I happened to have the processes tab of task manager open (sorting by CPU usage). After the desktop freezes, the image names of the processes continue to suffle as CPU usage changes (including the regular appearance of MB's process as it uses 40 - 60%). After a minute or two however, even the task manager window freezes.

I stumbled onto this thread by accident and I'm glad I did.

As malwarebyte's checked box indicating active live protection was greyed out and could not be unchecked, I accessed msconfig and disabled malwarebvytes from starting up altogether. After re-booting, I have not experienced any further desktop freezes.

[xub1]

Hi

will malwarebytes contact the forum members when a fix is ready for this problem ?, I have used Malwarebytes for ages and this is my first real problem. and it is a real problem,I have as other users have had to do,is to do an Acronis sys backup restore,

[ITworkerDude]

I have a computer service and repair business in southern Iowa and have recommended Malwarebytes anti-malware to all my customers. Your recent update has caused all of the customers using Windows XP to uninstall and no longer use your program because it freezes the computer and requires the program to be removed in safe mode. What a disaster. The only common factor with all of them is that they all use Avast 6.0 free, some use Zone Alarm free firewall....but just a handful of folks....

Oh. My. Gawd.

At work, I recommended we buy corporate licenses for MB, and have it installed on a boat-load of computers.

All has been well to this point.

With that "Ford Pinto" of an update that crashes and burns, I'm taking the heat for messing up our computers.

Don't you guys do product testing?

I'm worried now about any update from MalwareBytes.

How can I tell if this will happen again - I can't.

Do I trust your release methods going forward - NO.

So now I look like a fool for costing the company money for licenses to a product that causes downtime.

So now I have to waste time uninstalling it while everyone lights torches and chases me around the office.

Thanks MalwareBytes !!

[LDTate]

ITworkerDude

We did internal testing and public testing.

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 1.60 Beta Test

http://forums.malwarebytes.org/index.php?showforum=84

[Stevie D]

Oh. My. Gawd.

At work, I recommended we buy corporate licenses for MB, and have it installed on a boat-load of computers.

All has been well to this point.

With that "Ford Pinto" of an update that crashes and burns, I'm taking the heat for messing up our computers.

Don't you guys do product testing?

I'm worried now about any update from MalwareBytes.

How can I tell if this will happen again - I can't.

Thanks MalwareBytes !!

It's not your fault...I would suggest you roll back the PCs to version 1.5...highlight to management how MBAM has worked so well up to now. Then tell them this won't happen again, because as I posted earlier, you will go into MBAM and uncheck the box that says "download and install program update if available"...now you are in charge of when the update is done...when you are aware of an new update, visit the forum and see the initial results...then upgrade a test computer when all is clear and let it soak. When you see problems with a new update, wait until a patch update is released.

That's it...I wonder why so few are suggesting it...I have not woken up to a messed up PC and have had a great holiday. Everyone, not jut IT folks should apply this.

[Maurice Naggar]

@ITWorkerDue,

As just a stopgap measure, you can turn off automtic program updates until all this is sorted out. And not have to uninstall all.

Start the application. Click on the Settings Tab. The the Updater settings tab.

Uncheck Download and install program update if available.

Once more, this is a stopgap and not a permanent solution.

I am curious about a few details from your post, as well as the configurations of OS's and security apps.

All has been well to this point.

Any exceptions ? any crashes ? if so, details.

I'm taking the heat for messing up our computers.

Is this after a problem actually occured?

What specific version of Windows & service pack level are your systems?

Any 3rd-party firewall application installed? and if yes, name/version would really help

Which A/V app & if any other security app running?

If you have not had actual issues, then you may be just anticipating the worst. If you have experienced actual issues, the more details you provide, the better you would be helped.

[bearman1]

That is precisely what I've done there, Stevie.

I've uninstalled and cleansed M-Ban 1.6. ? 1800, and gone back to ZA(free) and MS security essentials.

This is after I did a registry scan and repair with PC tools "Performance Tool-kit", to clean up the registry.

Most everything is working great (again), save, ZA(free). Seems NOT to be updating (manual type). I'll just let it go until it alerts me that there is a new update, or just let it update itself automatically.

I've done EVERYTHING precisely as the mods have instructed me TO THE LETTER, and at LEAST several times.

I have even read through many postings when they were instructing others, and, have volunteered this information to them as well. Apparently, this is something they do NOT want, unless advised SPECIFICALLY by the experts.

[exile360]

That is precisely what I've done there, Stevie.

I've uninstalled and cleansed M-Ban 1.6. ? 1800, and gone back to ZA(free) and MS security essentials.

This is after I did a registry scan and repair with PC tools "Performance Tool-kit", to clean up the registry.

Most everything is working great (again), save, ZA(free). Seems NOT to be updating (manual type). I'll just let it go until it alerts me that there is a new update, or just let it update itself automatically.

I've done EVERYTHING precisely as the mods have instructed me TO THE LETTER, and at LEAST several times.

I have even read through many postings when they were instructing others, and, have volunteered this information to them as well. Apparently, this is something they do NOT want, unless advised SPECIFICALLY by the experts.

The ZA system freeze issue will not be resolved by a clean install. We have verified that particular issue to be a conflict and we are working on a fix for that.

[Man1]

Thanks for all the help so far.Would like to use mbam-clean.exe for clean up but unfortunate

"http://www.virustotal.com" reports issues with file.....Virus,Trojan others user say this is a

False positive detection please verify this file....Thanks

Link to report

http://www.virustotal.com/file-scan/report.html?id=829fe963793f92d15081db6d2a0beffdc7c684f096abb2c185073453af1b4d14-1325434910

mbam-clean.exe

Additional information

MD5 : e8bc470d1bff37b61f8a31ba5e4f740b

SHA1 : 6114e6edbe85e65d31ac8b734d63f61814e264f7

SHA256: 829fe963793f92d15081db6d2a0beffdc7c684f096abb2c185073453af1b4d14

[bearman1]

Thank You for that information.

I UNDERSTAND that you people have more issues to resolve/delve into (like the latest malware, etc., which has kept you at the "head of the class" [if you will] for so long now), then these relatively insignificant compatibility (in comparison) issues.

I know MY system, as well as others, may not be as QUITE up to "snuff". It is an older system, in comparison to vista or 7. However, it is as up to snuff as far as I (and others, I fear), KNOW how to get/keep it. I am not a computer geek by ANY stretch of the definition (nor, do I wish to be). Nor, am I a man of financial means to AFFORD the "Latest/Greatest" OS in the market-place.

That being said, I DO, however, strive to learn in the keeping of this old dinosaur up and running.

Again, I want to thank you for that information.

[exile360]

Thanks for all the help so far.Would like to use mbam-clean.exe for clean up but unfortunate

"http://www.virustotal.com" reports issues with file.....Virus,Trojan others user say this is a

False positive detection please verify this file....Thanks

Link to report

http://www.virustotal.com/file-scan/report.html?id=829fe963793f92d15081db6d2a0beffdc7c684f096abb2c185073453af1b4d14-1325434910

mbam-clean.exe

Additional information

MD5 : e8bc470d1bff37b61f8a31ba5e4f740b

SHA1 : 6114e6edbe85e65d31ac8b734d63f61814e264f7

SHA256: 829fe963793f92d15081db6d2a0beffdc7c684f096abb2c185073453af1b4d14

Those are false positives. the MD5 of the file matches exactly with the copy that I have (and have used) on my own system.