MB Support Tool Does Not Clean .QMLC Files in Hidden Appdata Folder

[lmacri]

I uninstalled Malwarebytes Free v3.8.3.2965-1.0.629 from Control Panel | Programs | Programs and Features today and then ran the latest Malwarebytes Support Tool v6.1.2.802 (Advanced Options | Clean) to try and wipe the last remaining traces from my system.  The attached log mbst-clean-results.txt shows the following errors...

2020-07-03 11:38:56.959   Failed to delete Folder c:\users\<myusername>\appdata\local\mbam\, reason:(The directory is not empty.(error=145)),
2020-07-03 11:38:56.984   Failed to delete Folder c:\users\<myusername>\appdata\local\mbamtray\, reason:(The directory is not empty.(error=145))

...and a registry scan with CCleaner still finds multiple registry entries related to Malwarebytes (which I did not remove since I assume they're harmless remnants).

Does anyone know the purpose of the .QMLC files in those hidden \Appdata\Local folders (a Google search suggests they have something to do with Qt Creator and/or the QML programming language) and whether it's safe to manually delete them before I install the latest MB Free v4.1.2.73-1.0.972?  I installed MB v3.9.3 on my computer on 20-Aug-2019, so these orphaned files were all created within a day or two of that installation.  None of my Threats Scans have detected a threat since MB Free v3.9.3 was installed.

 

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64-bit Win 10 Pro v1909 build 18363.836 * Firefox ESR v68.10.0 * Windows Defender v4.18.2006.10 * Malwarebytes Free v3.8.3-1.0.629
Dell Inspiron 5584, Intel i5-8265U@1.60/1.80 GHz, 8 GB RAM, Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620

mbst-clean-results.txt

Edited July 3, 2020 by lmacri
Minor edit to image

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[Porthos]

You can safely delete them. They will get recreated on install if needed. You can delete both of those folders in app data.

[lmacri]

3 hours ago, Porthos said:

You can safely delete them. They will get recreated on install if needed. You can delete both of those folders in app data.

Hi Porthos:

Thanks for the quick reply.  I went ahead and manually deleted those stray .QMLC files in AppData\Local\mbam and AppData\Local\mbamtray before installing MB Free v4.1.2-1.0.972 and all went well.  I don't know if the long scan times some v4.1.x users have reported only affect MB Premium users, but I ran a few Threat Scans in MB Free v4.1.2 and those scans ran just as fast, if not faster, as they did in MB Free v3.8.3 on my Win 10 v1909 machine (Fast Startup disabled).

As you predicted, the clean install of MB Free v4.1.2 re-created a new set of hidden .QMLC files in AppData\Local\mbam.

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64-bit Win 10 Pro v1909 build 18363.836 * Firefox ESR v68.10.0 * Windows Defender v4.18.2006.10 * Malwarebytes Free v4.1.2-1.0.972
Dell Inspiron 5584, Intel i5-8265U@1.60/1.80 GHz, 8 GB RAM, Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620

[Porthos]

Sounds like your good to go. Have a safe weekend.

[LiquidTension]

Thanks for the report. We'll look into why those folders weren't removed correctly.

Regarding the registry leftovers you mentioned - note that there are many keys/values that may contain references to Malwarebytes but are not explicitly created by the product and are not appropriate to remove. This is the case with any software installation. The Support Tool does a very thorough job with removing registry keys/values. If you have any details on exactly what was leftover, we can certainly take a look.

Edited July 5, 2020 by LiquidTension