Restored files don't show up as malware? (Follow up question on bitTorrent)

[bamboozle175]

I ran a manual scan and Malwarebytes quarantined two installers it deemed to be spyware. I rebooted to complete the process, and checked the quarantine list. I believed the installers were non-malicious so I restored them to see what they were the installer of. The weird thing is, Malwarebytes restored them to a location they definitely weren't in before (my C:\Users\PC\downloads folder was empty but Malwarebytes restored them there), and after rescanning, the restored installers no longer show up on the detected list! I checked the report of the first scan and it says no threats detected! Was I seeing things? What's going on?

The scan also found bitTorrent.exe to be malicious. I rebooted to complete the process, then went to the quarantine list to restore the program. The problem is, similar to the installers, the entire bitTorrent folder was restored in a completely different location. On top of that, the executable became "unable to run on my PC", requiring me to reinstall bitTorrent. The report doesn't say anything about this as it just says no threats detected.

[Malwarebytes]

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[exile360]

Greetings,

It sounds as though your Malwarebytes installation may be corrupted or having some sort of issue.  Please see if this corrects the issues you're experiencing:

1. Download and run the Malwarebytes Support Tool
2. Accept the EULA and click Advanced tab on the left (not Start Repair)
3. Click the Clean button, and allow it to restart your system and then reinstall Malwarebytes, either by allowing the tool to do so when it offers to on restart, or by downloading and installing the latest version from here
   

Once that is done, try performing a scan and see if anything is detected or not (theoretically they should be if they are in fact in Malwarebytes' database).

Please let us know how it goes.

Thanks

[bamboozle175]

Still nothing.

[exile360]

OK, then it's likely that the detections were false positives or detections for those items were removed from the database.  You can try scanning the installers manually to verify (right-click on the installers and select Scan with Malwarebytes) to see if it still detects them or not.

[bamboozle175]

There's nothing... it doesn't make sense.

[exile360]

It does make sense if the Malwarebytes installation was corrupt, which would also explain why you saw all the odd behaviors that you did.  It was likely that corruption that caused the detections to begin with.  That said, if you are concerned that an infection might be the cause of these issues, please follow the instructions in this topic, skipping any steps you are unable to complete, then create a new topic in our malware removal area by clicking here and a malware removal specialist will guide you in checking and cleaning your system of any threats.  That will allow you to make sure that there are no infections present on the system.

[bamboozle175]

I really doubt there's an infection, because I haven't touched this PC in a month and the last time I scanned, everything was clean. 

I just realized I forgot to mention that everything went wrong as soon as I updated Malwarebytes, perhaps that has something to do with it. Before, Malwarebytes would ask me if I wanted to quarantine the false positives, but now it just quarantines them straight away then nags me to reboot. I had two exclusions but Malwarebytes detected one of them anyway. Well whatever, I just restored everything back to before the whole fiasco, so problem solved, I guess.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.

[exile360]

Yes, it definitely sounds like your Malwarebytes installation got corrupted somehow, likely during the update.  If you did a system restore I would highly recommend doing another clean install of Malwarebytes just to make sure it isn't still corrupted at all as system restore has a tendency of messing up the synchronization of some of Malwarebytes' configuration files since the dates and times are forced out of sync by system restore.

[bamboozle175]

I did it 3 times already, guess there shouldn't be an issue now.

[exile360]

As long as the last time you did the clean install was after the system restore then yes, it should be fine.