MB missing from wife's laptop !

[deucy14]

I was shocked to notice my wife's MB had  disappeared.  I believe this to have happened in the last 5 days.  Description of her laptop is below.

Appearance of her MB application is only a .dll file under PC/Local disc (C:)/Program files/MWB/Anti-Malware/BrowserSDKDLL.dll

The computer laptop's firewall stopped a few year's ago, and for internet is  hardwired to our apartment from our Landlady's house at her router which I assume has a firewall protection. Looks like a very older and simple router. We are in Ecuador.

MB version  3.1.10.1000

Windows 10 home  64 bit   laptop   3 or 4  years old

1.    I am content with upgrading it to the most recent version, but just wondered what happened here ?

2.  I have another laptop (of two years age) with same MB version working like a champ.  I  wish to do a clean install of the latest version MB for both laptops.

3.  I had read on the forum somewhere, before I remove existing version sitting on computers  now (I can use my RevoUninstaller for my wife's uninstall or possibly for both laptops) that one should de-activate the computer's existing MB version before uninstalling.  Is this true ???   If so, how does one de-activate ?

4.  Do you recommend an installation of a 3rd party firewall such as ZoneAlarm ?  Last summer when in the State's I had gone through the routine to activate the HP computer built-in firewall with no luck.  Took it to reputable tech in the States who had a devil of a time, but he restored the computer's native firewall.  It only lasted a few months  while returning to overseas, and I won't allow a local in Ecuador to work on the computer.

5.  Please see attachments.

 

mb-check-results[1].txt

[Malwarebytes]

***This is an automated reply***

Hi,

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[exile360]

Greetings,

It sounds like what happened on your wife's laptop is something that several users have experienced recently where the recent update for version 3.4.4 of Malwarebytes attempted to install but during the process, after removing the older version, failed to install the new version resulting in the system having no Malwarebytes installation.

As for performing a clean install, you don't need to deactivate the license if it's going to be reinstalled on the same system.  If you do wish to perform a clean install then we recommend using the Malwarebytes utility designed for this purpose, MB-Clean.exe.  If you just want to go ahead and install the latest version of Malwarebytes and forego the clean install, you may download it from here.

Please let us know if you have any problems getting the software installed and up and running again, but it should install OK now.

As for a third party firewall, these days most stand by the effectiveness of the built in Windows Firewall which has evolved dramatically since the days of Windows XP and has become quite robust.  The only recommendation I might make is if you want outbound internet access control for programs as well as inbound blocking to prevent attacks from the outside (the latter of which the Windows Firewall is fully capable of on its own), then you might consider one of the many solutions available which use the WFP (Windows Filtering Platform); the technology built into the network stack which forms the core of the modern Windows Firewall, several of which are available for free such as the following examples (note: not all of them display a prompt/notification when a program wants internet access, so if that is something you want, make sure to read up on each firewall's features as they are quite varied with a lot of different options and functionality depending on what you're looking for):

• Windows 10 Firewall Control (they have a free version there which is completely adequate in my opinion and it's what I myself use and have used for years, ever since the days of Windows Vista)
• Windows Firewall Notifier
• TinyWall
• Simplewall
• Free Firewall

Edited March 23, 2018 by exile360

[deucy14]

Mar 23, 2018

Exile 360:

Impressive reply from you !

Thank you for your complete attention and fast response to each of my specifics. I will add “lessons” to that list: today's firewall options.

The take-aways from your reply are constructive to the extent that I hope others see it too.  Intuitively, I believe many who are generally well versed scan these “even basics” posts in order to learn the marginal “more.” I know I do, but not consistently / frequently. When I do, there are golden nuggets like this.

 

Thank you very much Exile 360 !

 

/

[exile360]

You're welcome, I'm glad you found the information useful

If there's anything else we can help you with, please don't hesitate to ask.

[delskorch]

exile360,

The 3.4 automatic upgrade also failed to install for me on a win10 machine. Downloading and running the installer worked. Thanks for providing that.

Just wanted to log another count of failed auto-updating.

[exile360]

You're welcome, thanks for letting us know.  The team is monitoring the situation with failed upgrades and investigating the issue, and hopefully they'll figure it out soon and get the problem addressed (most likely an issue in the Inno Setup installer used by Malwarebytes).