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Another Windows 7 x64 freeze after the 1.0.508 update


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22 hours ago, arbrich said:

We had 3 different machines today (all Windows 7) that as soon as you clicked on Devices and Printers the machines froze up right away and had to be restarted.

Just had another Windows 7 machine that had not shown any issue do the same thing when clicking on Devices and Printers lock up instantly.

 

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The occurrence of this problem is random or semi-random and all this reporting about what one was doing or not doing when it triggered is a waste of time. The multitude of different machine configurations seems to make no difference. The one thing that *IS* consistent is that it affects Windows 7 systems. That is where the focus should be.

Have they made a careful source code review of the version that does not have the problem and the version that does have the problem? There must be some difference in the code that could be discovered. Flailing around trying to trigger the failure is going about it backwards in this instance.

THIS MAY HELP: On the first machine I had a problem with it is an Intel motherboard with motherboard RAID 1 dual mirror drives. After a period of pain dealing with this recurrence I saw that when the problem happened a RAID notification popup appeared that the volume had gone offline. When the disk access is halted you get the symptoms of the failure of something not working and then clicking on other windows that will switch at first then eventually won't switch anymore. Eventually the cursor grinds to a halt. There is never anything in a disk log. The problem is that the disk access is being shut off and windows can no longer function. Find out why the disk is being disabled!!

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I have an Intel chipset and raid controller as well, and while I did see similar behavior with regards to switching windows/clicks and the cursor, I saw no errors or issues related to the disks or Intel IRST software.  As for reporting/replicating the various activities that seem to trigger it, it may lead to a clue as to the cause if it is at all reproducible as was the case with the Battle.net game launcher (one of the first means the QA team found that allowed them to reliably replicate it thanks to reports from users).  That's on the QA/testing side though, so you needn't worry about the Developers being sidetracked by what does or doesn't reliably trigger the issue to occur.  They are looking at the code because that's their job, but any reports and data that indicates a possible consistency in how to reliably reproduce the issue can in fact lead to a fix because it can indicate more precisely where the issue lies with regards to the functions of the Malwarebytes drivers, processes and services even if the issue is also random/semi-random under other conditions/on other systems.

I know all of this because I used to be QA for Malwarebytes and worked directly with the Devs on countless issues throughout the years, and while they would indeed comb through the code and analyze changes from one version to another just as you mentioned, they also relied on me to reproduce the issue reliably to help point them in the right direction with regards to precisely where in the code it was occurring and most importantly why it was occurring because knowing that a change they made is causing an issue is not enough since there is no doubt a good reason for the change such as adding new capabilities and/or improving performance etc., so they can't just roll back the code to the old version by sacrificing every change they've made to the software in the most recent release because of such an issue.  They need to know precisely why the issue is happening and then correct or work around the issue while retaining the improvements and changes that they made to the code in the latest release so that the users get the benefit of the fix as well as the benefits of the new features/capabilities (such as augmentations to protection, which is likely what this change was that caused this considering the driver(s)/component(s) it's related to).

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For the past week or so, I had just outright disabled MBAM on my PC upon startup waiting to see if a fix would be provided. Since the issue seems to be on-going for quite a while and I'm getting back into the swing of things with my employer and needing to browse the web again, earlier today I went ahead and rolled back to the previous component package outlined in workaround #2 of the pinned thread.

I am now running licensed MBAM version 3.6.1.2711 with component package 1.0.482 and update package 1.0.8834 with all real-time protections fully enabled and so far no freezes. Have been able to play Battle.net games and download large internet traffic via streaming (Netflix, YouTube, etc.) as normal. This was the PC where the freezing was aggressive, within a few minutes of startup.

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Hi Guys, just registered to add to this subject.

I am running Win7 Home Premium + SP1 and have had the same freezes for some time, which I thought was mem stick problems or power supply, both now discounted.

I have done 5 cleanups and re-install as mentioned and am still having these random freezes. I have just read through this topic and have now disabled BOTH web and ransomware protection. I will test with only one or the other disabled also, and will see what happens. I have attached the clean-up-results file for your info if it is any help.

Have used the Premium version for years now and only had the occasional problem but this is a real pain.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

Edited by blender
deleted licence info as per request
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5 minutes ago, LordOfKent said:

Hi Guys, just registered to add to this subject.

I am running Win7 Home Premium + SP1 and have had the same freezes for some time, which I thought was mem stick problems or power supply, both now discounted.

I have done 5 cleanups and re-install as mentioned and am still having these random freezes. I have just read through this topic and have now disabled BOTH web and ransomware protection. I will test with only one or the other disabled also, and will see what happens. I have attached the clean-up-results file for your info if it is any help.

Have used the Premium version for years now and only had the occasional problem but this is a real pain.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

mb-clean-results.txt

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12 minutes ago, LordOfKent said:

Hi Guys, just registered to add to this subject.

I am running Win7 Home Premium + SP1 and have had the same freezes for some time, which I thought was mem stick problems or power supply, both now discounted.

I have done 5 cleanups and re-install as mentioned and am still having these random freezes. I have just read through this topic and have now disabled BOTH web and ransomware protection. I will test with only one or the other disabled also, and will see what happens. I have attached the clean-up-results file for your info if it is any help.

Have used the Premium version for years now and only had the occasional problem but this is a real pain.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

Thanks blender grabbed wrong file, wot a d**k :(

 

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2 hours ago, abs7125 said:

Does  any one know how to get a hold of MB's legal team? This has gone on long enough. They have caused software damage, to people system, endless hours and days of trouble shooting, and they are not showing any signs of urgency in this. 

I think most of us share your frustration, but you can be certain there is a 'limitation of liability' clause in the EULA.

The work-around of rolling back to the previous component package works perfectly fine and offers full protection.

It would be prudent for MBAM to make previous versions available for users (i.e.  archive directory for subscribers).

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5 hours ago, Stop_The_Madness said:

THIS MAY HELP: On the first machine I had a problem with it is an Intel motherboard with motherboard RAID 1 dual mirror drives. After a period of pain dealing with this recurrence I saw that when the problem happened a RAID notification popup appeared that the volume had gone offline. When the disk access is halted you get the symptoms of the failure of something not working and then clicking on other windows that will switch at first then eventually won't switch anymore. Eventually the cursor grinds to a halt. There is never anything in a disk log. The problem is that the disk access is being shut off and windows can no longer function. Find out why the disk is being disabled!!

I have seen this behavior as well on Windows 7 machines with RAID1 arrays where drives go offline.

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3 hours ago, LAVA said:

I think most of us share your frustration, but you can be certain there is a 'limitation of liability' clause in the EULA.

The work-around of rolling back to the previous component package works perfectly fine and offers full protection.

It would be prudent for MBAM to make previous versions available for users (i.e.  archive directory for subscribers).

I think it would be even more prudent to totally ditch Malwarebytes altogether.  If their Quality control is as bad as we are seeing, why would you want to trust them at all ?  I sure don't.

I think I'm done with Malwarebytes.  It is uninstalled, and my PC runs like new again.  I wish I had known how bad MB is sooner, and I would have avoided countless lost hours and aggravation.  I just wish I could get all of that time back, as my computer was often locked up for over an hour at a time, on about a dozen or more occasions in the last month. 

 I'll just stick to Microsoft Security essentials, and only visit known, safe websites on my business computer.  If I need to click on anything new or unknown, I'll just do it on my phone and be safe.    

 

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Hi all—

I wanted to share some promising news!

We’ve now been able to consistently reproduce the freeze in house on more systems and we believe we have narrowed the problem to multi-processor synchronization issues with our Web Protection code on Windows 7.

We have an updated version of Malwarebytes that we’re currently testing, so far with encouraging results.

I want to make this update available just as soon as possible, but we want to be sure we aren’t introducing any additional issues, so further testing is still required.  Assuming all goes well, I’m hoping we’ll have more good news for you next week.

We appreciate everyone who’s been working with us to help resolve this problem, even behind the scenes.  Your assistance has been invaluable!

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19 minutes ago, bdubrow said:

Hi all—

I wanted to share some promising news!

We’ve now been able to consistently reproduce the freeze in house on more systems and we believe we have narrowed the problem to multi-processor synchronization issues with our Web Protection code on Windows 7.

We have an updated version of Malwarebytes that we’re currently testing, so far with encouraging results.

I want to make this update available just as soon as possible, but we want to be sure we aren’t introducing any additional issues, so further testing is still required.  Assuming all goes well, I’m hoping we’ll have more good news for you next week.

We appreciate everyone who’s been working with us to help resolve this problem, even behind the scenes.  Your assistance has been invaluable!

 

Very interesting. That is one of the issues that Microsoft (i.e. Mark Russinovich & Pedro Teixeira, etal) improved with Windows 8 and Server 2012 (NT 6.2): the process scheduler and thread pooling.  i.e. Blocking and race conditions.  That could explain why only Windows 7 was impacted, as it does not handle some multi-threaded conditions as well as later versions of the NT core.

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Has there been some sort of sweeping change in the management of your company, or have you just replaced competent employees with unqualified buffoons? Seriously? It wasn't all that long ago where MB updated and it started devouring RAM non-stop until your computer crashed, and now you've actually outdone your colossal screw up there with something that completely locks up people's computers forcing a hard reset. Do you have any QA at all? Cause it sure as hell doesn't seem so. I won't be renewing my paid subscription after it times out. I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt after that last travesty, but to have another incident like that happen so soon and for it to take you a month to fix it is simply unacceptable. Maybe if you can manage to go a year without causing critical errors on your customer's machines I'll consider giving you my money again, but I doubt it. 

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1 hour ago, bdubrow said:

Hi all—

I wanted to share some promising news!

We’ve now been able to consistently reproduce the freeze in house on more systems and we believe we have narrowed the problem to multi-processor synchronization issues with our Web Protection code on Windows 7.

We have an updated version of Malwarebytes that we’re currently testing, so far with encouraging results.

I want to make this update available just as soon as possible, but we want to be sure we aren’t introducing any additional issues, so further testing is still required.  Assuming all goes well, I’m hoping we’ll have more good news for you next week.

We appreciate everyone who’s been working with us to help resolve this problem, even behind the scenes.  Your assistance has been invaluable!

Thanks for the update and to learn that there appears to be a logical reason behind the erratic Win 7 system freezes . I'm sure your communication is greatly appreciated by all affected MWB customers.

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1 hour ago, LAVA said:

 

Very interesting. That is one of the issues that Microsoft (i.e. Mark Russinovich & Pedro Teixeira, etal) improved with Windows 8 and Server 2012 (NT 6.2): the process scheduler and thread pooling.  i.e. Blocking and race conditions.  That could explain why only Windows 7 was impacted, as it does not handle some multi-threaded conditions as well as later versions of the NT core.

Good insight, I bet you're right.  This also explains why, since 3.x was first released, that Vista and 7 (though especially 7, likely because so few stuck with Vista once 7 was released) have been plagued by performance issues, lockups and just overall bad behavior of MB3 under various conditions across several releases.  It also explains why so many of those same issues did not seem to impact Windows 8/8.1 or Windows 10 in most cases.  I've been watching these issues since 3.0 was first released and I've been keeping a close eye on them since I'm a Windows 7 user myself (with absolutely no intention of ever downgrading to Windows 10) and I kept wondering why it seemed that so often issues with Malwarebytes would be isolated to Windows 7.  I'm sure it's not the only reason, but it would explain a lot considering how similar so many of the issues appear to be, with either the entire system or Malwarebytes itself locking up/freezing or just taking a long time to load or unload and delaying and/or freezing everything else in the process.

I hope that the Developers keep this in mind going forward because I suspect this is not the only module to be impacted by this limitation in 7.

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From a seemingly unaffected machine.  I say seemingly because it was my wife's computer and she never complained about a freeze, nor have I experienced any freezes while in possession of her computer the last two or three days.........

 

This computer was born with Windows 7 and still contains all the stock hardware (for now.....)

 

mbst-grab-results.zip

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6 hours ago, bdubrow said:

We have an updated version of Malwarebytes that we’re currently testing, so far with encouraging results.

I want to make this update available just as soon as possible, but we want to be sure we aren’t introducing any additional issues, so further testing is still required.  Assuming all goes well, I’m hoping we’ll have more good news for you next week.

I would be happy to help test the update on my affected workstation.

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I am another frustrated user.  I had both of our computers hit with the memory problem last year with no notice from Malwarebytes that they were the cause.  Back in December I first started noticing the freezing problem on my Dell computer with Windows 7.  I seemed to have it freeze after downloading electronic versions of daily papers and creating PDF files.  I thought my PC had finally come to the end of it's life and seriously looked into buying a new one.  I finally decided to move to an HP with Windows 10 - not the ideal solution since all of my programs wouldn't migrate and I did spend days getting things running again.  A few days ago we installed a new HP LaserJet printer and afterwards my wife's Dell PC with Windows 7 started experiencing freeze problems.  I spent the entire day yesterday troubleshooting her PC.  I discovered I could consistently cause the freeze by going into Devices and Printers in the Control Panel.  When I disconnected the PC from the network it would work.  I uninstalled all printers, disconnected other devices from the network, attached another monitor, keyboard and mouse ... etc., etc..  Nothing seemed to work.  I finally googled the problem and came upon this forum.  I would not have guessed that Malwarebytes could have been the issue.  While I am relieved to find the cause ... I am again frustrated that there was no notice from Malwarebytes.  They have our emails from when we purchased/registered the product.  Why can't they notify us when they first discover a problem?  In this case, back in December?  I, along with who knows how many users, have spent hours upon hours on this (and I almost bought a new PC).  I still wish I hadn't given up on my old Windows 7 machine.

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