Malwarebytes causes lags in Age of Empires 2 Definite Edition

[kon_bick]

Hi everyone,

it cost me 2 full days to find the root of the problem, but now I found it:

The newest version of Malwarebytes (4.3.0.98) causes the computer game Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition to lag. The lags are constantly occuring and delay the game execution by 0.5~2 sec. In multiplayer this is compensated with a fastforward, making it really hard to live with that situation. It took a while to trouble shoot this, but finally I found the culprit: deactivated Malwarebytes I don't have lags anymore.

I have a second computer laptop where 4.2.1.89 is installed and it doesn't cause lags. The lags came with a more recent version (newer than 4.2.1.89) but I can't tell exactly which one. But the last time I reinstalled Malwarebytes it asked if I wanted to install additional real-time protection or something like this (what was it exactly?). Maybe this was the update that caused the problems.

I am happy to include logs if I am instructed how to do so. Otherwise I will turn off malwarebytes when I am playing but if I forget to re-activate it after playing too often, I might consider moving to another virus protection software. That would be sad because so far I am really happy with Malwarebytes.

Best regards

Kon

[Porthos]

7 minutes ago, kon_bick said:

The newest version of Malwarebytes (4.3.0.98) causes the computer game Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition to lag.

Have you tried adding the game to exclusions.

Also it would help to find out which module is responsible. Turn off one at a time to test. Start with ransomware protection.

[kon_bick]

@Porthos good suggestions, thanks! I can confirm that "ransomware protection" is the culprit.

And also adding an exclusion for the whole game folder solved the problem immediately.

[Porthos]

31 minutes ago, kon_bick said:

@Porthos good suggestions, thanks! I can confirm that "ransomware protection" is the culprit.

And also adding an exclusion for the whole game folder solved the problem immediately.

I am glad exclusions corrected your issue. If you need any other assistance don't hesitate.

Be safe.

[kon_bick]

@Porthos thanks. Could you let me know what the ransomeware does and why you guessed it would be the cause of the problem?

[Porthos]

Ransomware Protection is analyzing the behavior and that's likely what is causing the issues.  Ransomware Protection is more reactive than proactive in that it analyzes the behavior of processes and threads in memory after they are already running to look for possible ransomware behavior (such as deleting backups, attempting to encrypt files etc.)

It can slow some legit processes as well.

[kon_bick]

Okay, interesting. I noticed that recording the game made the situation much worse. Usually multiplayer games are recorded. Then, all the commands are written to a small local file continously. This might look very suspicious to Malwarebytes... Then often it lags when Malwarebytes does checks on the program, I guess.

However, this didn't happen in previous versions. That's why it took me so long to figure out the culprit.

[Redkite]

I just wanted to say this fixed the same problem I had been having. Thank you for your post kon_bick  and Porthos for your solution.