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Browsers not working after latest update


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After the last upgrade of Malwarebytes (3.3.1.2183), I am no longer able to use a browser on my Windows XP sp3 PC.  Sometimes one will load but have no access, other times they won't load at all.  I have chrome, firefox and opera(my default).   I have ran the clean routine, reloaded malwarebytes (it did not automatically ask), and turned off self protection.  Is there a way to downgrade the a previous version of Malwarebytes?  Running with no problems when Malwarebytes is turned off.

Edited by berts
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Now I'm confused.  Turned Malwarebytes on so I could turn web protection off.  Opened up another tab without problems then turned web protection back on and was able to open another tab and a different browser.  I will get out of both browsers and try to get back in.  

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Now I'm confused.  Turned Malwarebytes on so I could turn web protection off.  Opened up another tab without problems then turned web protection back on and was able to open another tab and a different browser.  I will get out of both browsers and try to get back in.  

 

That worked so will try a reboot with everything turned on.  

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Now I'm confused.  Turned Malwarebytes on so I could turn web protection off.  Opened up another tab without problems then turned web protection back on and was able to open another tab and a different browser.  I will get out of both browsers and try to get back in.  

 

That worked so will try a reboot with everything turned on.  

 

This tab came up after the reboot but another tab (I'm using Opera) looks like it isn't going to make it.  

 

Turned web protection back off, tab remained frozen but when closed and another tab opened there was access again.

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Just to confirm, is the problem only in Opera at the moment (with Web Protection on)? Or are all browsers still impacted with Web Protection turned on? 

Make sure to toggle Web Protection on/off BEFORE opening any browser. The browsers won't always reflect changes correctly when Web Protection is toggled while the browser is already open. If you need to toggle it on or off, close all browsers, toggle and re-test. 

 

If all browsers continue to be broken with Web Protection on, we will need to get more detailed logs. Do the following:

  • Turn on debug logging -- (Open Malwarebytes > Settings > Under "Application" tab, toggle "Event Log Data"
  • Make sure Web Protection is enabled and try to open all your browsers for me just to gather logs about what is happening to them
  • Resubmit logs as you did with the first batch of logs earlier. 
Edited by vbarytskyy
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Busy day yesterday, sorry for the late reply.  

I'm more confused than before.  Web protection has been left on and this morning when I attempted to start Opera, it would not respond so I started Chrome which came up fine.  Started Firefox which was also okay then eXited Opera and started it again without problems.   Enhanced Event Log was enabled so hopefully there's something in the logs that will shed some light.

Thanks.

mb-check-results.zip

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1 hour ago, vbarytskyy said:

It looks like your Opera browser is outdated. Could you update it and see if that resolves the issue?

Opera is a Chromium-based browser.  Google announced that Win XP SP3 and Vista SP2 users would stop receiving updates and security fixes for Chrome as of April 2016 - see Google's official announcement <here>.  That means that Opera v36 will still run on these operating systems but Opera v37 and higher are only compatible with Win 7 and higher - see Martin Brinkmann's article Opera 36 will be the last for Windows XP and Vista on ghacks.net.

The only major browser that is fully supported on Win XP SP3 and Vista SP2 is Firefox ESR (extended support release).  Mozilla recently announced in the blog entry Update on Firefox support for Windows XP and Vista that Firefox ESR v52.x will be fully supported on these older platforms until June 2018.
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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox ESR v52.5.0 * NS Premium v22.11.2.7 * MB Premium v3.3.1.2183-1.0.236

Edited by lmacri
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Actually all browsers went away on me.  I had to turn off Malwarebytes to install the new Opera browser downloaded using Firefox which in turn decided I needed to install it's newest version.  I took a screenshot of task manager where I tried to load a browser before turning off protection.  Interesting that all 3 browsers show 1 read and 5 writes but I don't know if that is meaningful.  I'm beginning to think there may be a virus involved. 

TskMgr.PNG

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Is it possible for MB to be infected?  Booted in safe mode and ran a scan for over an hour (gotta work too)  and long enough to get well past rootkit, memory, and system files.  Found nothing.  Checked this morning for the nightly scan log and it did not run the scheduled scan.   When I  "Quit Malwarebytes" it shows no cpu time but continues to occupy a large piece of memory, or at least it did the first time I quit.  Killed the 2 MB tasks after about 10 minutes after quitting MB and then restarted.  Everything looked normal so I waited a while and then quit again and the tasks went away as expected. 

The only thing that appears constant is when a browser won't start, quitting and killing MB tasks allows the browsers to work and once a browser is running, starting MB does not stop the browser. 

Playing with various situations as I was writing this post, in and out of browsers (firefox, opera & chrome) and quitting and restarting MB the CPU usage by MB appears to have calmed down.  It was running high percentages most of the time lately but is actually sitting at 0 quite a bit now.  One other thing of note, I started a dfrag last night (could also explain the missing scan log).  Currently my system appears to be running more or less normal but I will let you know if this changes.

Still totally baffled here.  Do the logs show anything?  

mb-check-results.zip

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@berts

Typically if our software gets corrupt, there will be weird issues that are beyond just the browser problems. As far as just the software getting infected, we have not seen any reports that would lead us to believe it is happening. 

 - I am looking over the log in detail but for the time being, it looks like your debug logging is still turned on which will cause higher than normal usage from Malwarebytes since it is trying to log a lot more information. Make sure to turn it off when you get a chance.

  • Turn off debug logging -- (Open Malwarebytes > Settings > Under "Application" tab, toggle "Event Log Data"

For the time being, go ahead and turn off "Self Protection" and run Malwarebytes with all other settings on. See how it behaves for you while I get more information from our teams about issues with Self Protection on.  You'll still be protected from threats as long as all other features are on. 

Edited by vbarytskyy
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It was left on thinking it might give you a better look into what is going on if I left the debut log on. 

As of right now, it's looking more and more like it was the result of a highly fragmented disk as since the defrag (and cleanup) system as well as browser performance has improved considerably.   Attached is what defrag looked like after running last night (top bar) and a while ago.  You'd think it would be better able to connect the white and blue space.

One other thing I forgot I had done.  There was a svchost.exe process that had a huge amount of I/O in relation to every other task that was running.  I killed it with the thought that it couldn't make things worse.  Whether or not that had an effect is currently unknown but I will watch to see if that happens again.  I'm highly suspect of an OS that doesn't tell you what is happening and when I see all the svchost.exe tasks running I always wonder just what they're doing. 

AfterDefrag.PNG

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1 hour ago, vbarytskyy said:

For the time being, go ahead and turn off "Self Protection" and run Malwarebytes with all other settings on. See how it behaves for you while I get more information from our teams about issues with Self Protection on.  You'll still be protected from threats as long as all other features are on. 

Hi berts:

If turning off Self Protection doesn't help, be aware that there are several Win XP SP3 and Vista SP2 users are currently reporting issues with the Exploit Protection module in the latest MB v3.3.1, including browser freezes and crashes.  Many users with these older operating systems find that disabling the Exploit Protection feature in MB v3.3.1 (Settings | Protection | Real-Time Protection | Exploit Protection) and re-booting solves their problem - see Coolbreeze767's thread XP Locking Up for one example.  In a few cases users cannot disable their Exploit Protection unless they boot into Safe Mode and then manually launch MB v3.3.1 to disable this feature.

The current Component Package v1.0.236 that come with MB v3.3.1 includes MBAE v1.10 (where AE = anti-exploit).  Coolbreeeze767 uninstalled MB v3.3.1 and tested the standalone MBAE v1.11 (still in beta testing) and that seemed to solve their problem, but hake reported <here> that the latest beta of MBAE v.1.11 is still causing problems on their Win XP SP3 computer.

If you're curious, some of the fixes currently being tested in the beta version of MBAE v1.11.40 are posted in the Anti-Exploit Beta forum at Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit 1.11 Build 40 released.
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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox ESR v52.5.0 * NS Premium v22.11.2.7 * MB Premium v3.3.1.2183-1.0.236 

Edited by lmacri
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