Web Blocking / RAM Usage: How to Recover - HOME USERS

[msherwood]

In the early morning of Saturday, January 27, 2018, a faulty Web Protection update was released which caused a connection issue for many of our customers. As a side effect of the web protection blocks, the product also spiked memory usage and possibly caused a crash. We triaged the issue quickly and pushed a protection update on Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 10:48a PST.

The affected products were Malwarebytes 3 Premium, Malwarebytes Management Console (MBMC), and Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection (aka Malwarebytes Cloud Console). Malwarebytes for Mac, Android, AdwCleaner, Incident Response and Breach Remediation were not and are not affected. For a complete description and root cause analysis please click here.

Please note endpoints were not affected if they were turned off before Saturday, Jan 27, 2018 and then were not turned back on until after Saturday, Jan 27, 2018 at 11am PST. For affected endpoints, this thread is intended as recovery guidance.

 

Guidance below applies to home users and/or Malwarebytes 3 Premium users. If you're a corporate user, click here for details on how to recover your systems. If you are not experiencing issues and/or are using Update package version 1.0.3808 or higher, you do not need to do anything.

 

For home users and/or Malwarebytes 3 Premium users

1. Restart PC - note it may take up to three restarts after the update to stabilize the system
2. Verify you have Update package version 1.0.3808 or higher
   • Open Malwarebytes
   • Click Settings, then About tab
   • Look for "Update package version 1.0.3808" or higher

 

In most cases, 1-3 restarts will solve the issue. If after the restarts you're still experiencing high RAM usage and/or Web Protection is not starting, please continue below.

1. If restarting does not solve the issues, please download and run MB-CLEAN
   • Download MB-CLEAN
   • Close all open applications
   • Double-click and run mb-clean-3.1.0.1031.exe
   • A prompt with an option to clean up the system will appear: click Yes
     • Yes - will proceed with backing up the license key (Malwarebytes 3.x only) and initiating the cleanup process
   • Once the cleanup process is completed, a prompt will appear:
     • Yes - will proceed and post reboot you will be prompted to continue with the downloading, installation and activation of latest version of Malwarebytes 3
     • No - will exit the utility and you will not be prompted (post reboot) to download, reinstall and re-activate (not recommended)
       • We recommend rebooting immediately. Additionally, stopping at this step is not recommended and will most likely not resolve your issue(s).
   • Upon reboot, a prompt will appear: click Yes
     • Yes - will download, install and activate the latest version of Malwarebytes 3
     • No - will exit the utility and Malwarebytes 3 will not be downloaded, reinstalled or re-activated (not recommended)
2. Verify you have Update package version 1.0.3808 or higher
   • Open Malwarebytes
   • Click Settings, then About tab
   • Look for "Update package version 1.0.3808" or higher

 

If the above does not solve your issues and you're a home user and/or Malwarebytes 3 Premium user, please start a new topic.

Edited January 31, 2018 by msherwood