Replies

Very thorough write-up. Thank you for taking the time to let us know.

Many thanks for the comment Rick..

The problem frustrated me no end so I hope it might help someone else experiencing the same frustration resolve the issue before Malwarebytes Premium developers find the problem and fix it for good.

I just wish I could figure out why it suddenly decided to start behaving itself? I hate it when that happens!!

Cheers..

Hey Y’all,

I’ve been running 14986 for about a week now w/o issue. Just lucky I guess. :cheers:

Hi RetiredGeek,

One of my laptops is Windows 10 Home edition and I too have been running their Anniversary update version for close to two weeks now without any sort of the issues others seem to be complaining about on the web, both with installation and usability after install.

I still *hate* the Windows 10 interface however and use Start10 to give me the functionality I’m used to and like in Windows 7, but I often need to revert to the Windows 10 standard interface when trouble shooting client machines.. Hate it when I have to do that :rolleyes:

Cheers..

I hope this is the right place to ask this:

I’m running the latest version of M-Bytes Premium that now protects against ransomeware etc.

I deleted Bitdefender free because M-Bytes says you no longer need an antivirus program when running M-Bytes.

I don’t buy into that advice for a second. I’ve been in the IT Support game for years and have seen first hand (many times) that no single anti-virus / anti-malware product will ever catch everything. I run Avast Internet Security alongside Malwarebytes Premium and they operate together flawlessly, with absolutely no noticeable effect on system performance. Prior to Malwarebytes 3.0, I was running Avast Internet Security, Malwarebytes Pro and Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit product. Again, zero issues with system performance and I often noticed one of the three catch and prevent something on websites that the other two didn’t complain about.

As for Microsoft Defender, I don’t trust it at all and leave it off.

Just my opinion.

Cheers..

Andrew

Hey Y’all,

I just downloaded and installed MB 3.04 and it recognized my lifetime license right off.

However, I keep getting this message at boot or restart.
46253-Malwarebytes-Real-Time

I’ve played with the delayed start options up to 30 seconds and still get the message.

However, if I just wait a few seconds then open MB it shows that all protections are enabled!

Once when I opened the task tray it showed a red exclamation point icon over the MB icon but that disappeared quickly also.

Now I’m looking for a way to prevent that annoying popup msg. in the notification area.

Hi RetiredGeek,

I had the same problem and no amount of fiddling with settings seemed to help. I’m guessing that like me, you upgraded to the latest version of Malwarebytes 3.0.4 without uninstalling v2.x first?

I’ve been an avid user and supporter of Malwarebytes Premium Version 2 (formerly Malwarebytes Pro) for years. It’s always been an excellent product that runs alongside just about any Anti-Virus application without issues and has saved my (and many of my clients) hide many times from Malware and Virus infections. It seems to have an uncanny ability to pick up many things that Anti-Virus applications occasionally miss.

That said, when I got an email from them that suggested I upgrade to their latest version, i jumped on the chance, especially since I’ve owned a life-time license for a couple of years now that I purchased during a promotion.

Here’s part of an article I wrote on LinkedIn, both before and then updated after I finally resolved the problem while in contact with a Malwarebytes Support Tech..

I’ll try to just include the relevant “fix suggestion” bits for brevity.

——————–8<——————————

From: Malwarebytes Support

In order to address this error I want you to first uninstall the version of Malwarebytes that you have installed now

Then I want you to run our cleanup tool – http://downloads.malwarebytes.org/file/mbam_clean

Once you have run the clean-up tool I want you to restart of the computer <— This is very important!

Now I would like you to reinstall it once more please

https://downloads.malwarebytes.com/file/mbam

Then let me know how things are working for you

Regards,

xxxxxxx xxxxxxx – “xxxxxx xx” Customer Success Specialist & Malware Removal Specialist

—————————————————————

From Me to Malwarebytes Support

Hi xxxxxxxx,

Thank you for your support, however the problem persists. (See pic below and the attachment)

I followed your instructions to the letter in the following order;

1. I uninstalled Malwarebytes using the Program and Features tool in Windows Control Panel – It asked me to reboot my computer so I did.

2. After logging back in, I then ran “mbam-clean-2.3.0.1001.exe” which I had downloaded from your link. It suggested I restart my computer again so I did a reboot.

3. I installed “mb3-setup-consumer-3.0.4.1269.exe” after downloading it from the link you provided, allowed it to update its definitions, and did an initial Malwarebytes scan.

4. I then entered my License Details which were accepted and it then turned from a Trial to a full version of Malwarebytes Premium 3.0.4 with a Green Tick on the Dashboard screen and the words “Awesome! You’re protected”

5. I closed Malwarebytes Premium and restarted my computer once again just to be sure.

6. All was well for approximately 20 minutes and the the above Pop-Up appeared just like it had been doing before uninstalling and reinstalling the product.

7. While the Pop-Up was still there, I right clicked the Malwarebytes icon in the System Tray and noted that;

– Web Protection: On was ticked

– Exploit Protection: On was ticked

– Malware Protection: On was ticked

– Ransomware Protection: On was ticked

8. I then opened Malwarebytes Premium and noted that Real Time Protection was also On for all the four items listed above on the Dashboard screen.

Your suggested solution to the problem did not seem to work and the problem with the Pop-Ups persists.

My computer is a;

Windows Edition: Windows 7 Professional – Service Pack 1 – Fully Patched with all available Important Microsoft Window Updates

Model: Intel Corp DH67CL AAG10212-208

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40 GHz

Installed (RAM): 20.0 GB

System Type: 64 – bit Operating System

I have no other issues with the computer and had none before upgrading to Malwarebytes 3.0.4 Premium

Could you please suggest what else I can do to resolve this annoying problem?

My thanks and I look forward and hope to hear back from you soon.

Regards,

—————————————————

From: Malwarebytes Support

Hello Andrew

Does it keep happening all the time or when you first start the computer?

Regards

xxxxxxx xxxxxxx – “xxxxxx xx” Customer Success Specialist & Malware Removal Specialist

—————————————————

From Me to Malwarebytes Support

Hi Xxxxxxx,

To answer your question, the Pop-Up appeared on at least 4 occasions throughout the day (no reboots) after following your instructions of uninstalling and reinstalling the product.

That said however, the issue seems to have now resolved itself and I’ve yet to see the Pop-Up appear “unless” I reboot the computer, where it pops up once immediately after a restart. I dismiss the Pop-Up by clicking the “Turn on Now” button and now it doesn’t seem to re-occur during normal system use throughout the day anymore.

I have no idea why the behavior stopped as I’ve not installed or uninstalled anything else since re-installing Malwarebytes 3.0.4 per your instructions, nor done any other type of system maintenance or adjustments.

Curious.

Did you guys happen to send an update through that may have addressed the issue?

Anyway, all appears well now and I’ll continue to monitor the situation.

Thanks very much for your assistance.

Regards,

—————————————-

From: Malwarebytes Support

Hello Andrew
.
If it is only happening now when you first start the computer then do the following
.
The protection is actually on but what happens is the pop-up pops up to fast – it is something that the developers know about and they are working on it.
What I would like you to do for now is to delay the protection on start-up by 15 seconds
1. open Malwarebytes
2. click on settings
3. go to the protection tab
4. scroll down till you see “Startup Options”
5. Set the “Delay Real-Time Protection When Malwarebytes Starts” to the “ON” Position
6. Next to “Delay Protection For” set it to 15 seconds
.
Restart the computer and let me know if you still get the popup
.
Regards,

xxxxxxx xxxxxxx – “xxxxxx xx” Customer Success Specialist & Malware Removal Specialist

—————————————-
So there you have it. It’s been two days now and apart from Definition Updates, nothing seems to have been sent down as the version number is identical to when the problem began. Yet now it’s suddenly stopped on its own. (?)

A mystery for sure. The above solution “eventually” seemed to work for me, but I’ve no idea why.

Upgrading to Malwarebytes 3.x Premium is recommended, especially for the new Anti-Exploit and Anti-Ransomware modules included. If you experience the Pop-Up issue you can try the solution above, though I’d suggest taking a note of your Subscription License information, uninstalling your current v2.x version and doing a clean install to lessen the chances of your striking the same problem I did.

In a worst case scenario, at least if you do strike a problem, I’ve found Malwarebytes support to be genuinely helpful and prompt in their replies. For that they deserve my congratulations.

Side Note 1: I too hold a lifetime license for Malwarebytes Premium but I’d also purchased a one year subscription to their Anti-exploit product. When I first “upgraded” MB2.x to MB3.x it removed the Anti-Exploit product but took on the expiry date of Anti-Exploit in MB3.x – This however was easily fixed by entering my lifetime license details again after the complete uninstall and re-install or Malwarebytes 3.x

Side Note 2: What I forgot to mention to the Malwarebytes support tech is that after running his uninstall tool and rebooting the machine, I also ran Pirform’s CCleaner product with default values and rebooted a second time before re-installing MB3.x and rebooting one more time. I have no idea if this did anything useful at all because the pop-up still appeared after re-boot, just thought I’d include it for the sake of completeness.

My apologies for the length of this post.

Hope this helps and all the best..

Andrew

Hi erfan,

Not a free solution, but I’ve had a lot of success with a product by Wondershare called “Wondershare PDF Converter Pro”

Unfortunately, the version I own is no longer available but has been replaced by a product called PDFelement. A description taken directly from their website;

“Wondershare PDFelement is your best choice for converting from PDF to Word files. You can add a batch of files to convert them at a time. You can also customize the page range that you want to convert. In addition to Word, this PDF to Word Converter also helps you convert PDF to many other formats like Excel, PPT, Epub, Text, Image formats and more.”

I prefer to use the Wondershare solution over two other products I have purchased and installed on the same machine because it quite simply, gives me better results. The other two products (both excellent) are “Adobe Acrobat X Pro” and “PDF-XChange Editor Pro” (This one I keep updating to new major versions as well as I personally prefer it over Adobe Acrobat X Pro) – both are excellent products (though a little pricey) that will also do what you want, but there’s a few hoops to jump through in both to achieve the desired result when all you want to do is convert a PDF file to word.

The Wondershare product makes it oh so easy and quick, produces an excellent result and I frequently find myself using it.

You can learn more about and download a trial of the Wondershare PDFelement software using the following link;

https://pdf.wondershare.com/pdf-to-word/

Hope this helps you out.

Disclaimer: I have absolutely no affiliation with Wondershare products whatsoever. I am just a happy user of some of their products.

Cheers..

Andy

Edit: Forgot to mention that I own a few other Wondershare products as well and on the odd occassion I’ve needed technical support, their replies are almost instant. In short, their support system is exceptional, even to just trial users.

Hi akjudge (aka Jim)

Thank you very much for the information. I’ll definitely look into square and ask them a few questions. When you say you can phone in a credit card number, is this to an Australian line or do you have to phone USA? If you could please clarify that it would be much appreciated.

Many thanks..

Andrew

Hi Coochin,

Many of my regular customers pay me via Internet Banking. I email them an invoice which has the BSB & account details; they go into their Internet Banking and transfer the funds to my bank account.

If the customer transfers the funds via “direct transfer” the transaction is usually completed within an hour-or-two, depending on which bank the customer is with (Westpac in particular seems to take up to two days to process such transfers).

If the customer transfers the funds via BPay it takes at least two days, sometimes three, for the credit to appear in my online banking.

Many of my clients do exactly that – pay via bank transfer which is fine for those that I’ve established a great working relationship with and have proven that they are good payers. The problem with this however is that when they also bank with the Commonwealth Bank, the transfer is instant, however any other financial institution takes up to 48 hours to show up in my account, which is less than ideal for new clients that I have no history with.

Surely there must be a credit card processor in Australia that will suit my needs? I’ve google a few but I’m not sure if they’re any good or not so was hoping for some recommendations based on personal experience of you folks.

Anyone else have any ideas?

Many thanks..

Andy

1. Can I have more than one real-time anti-malware product installed?

No. Having more than one real-time anti-malware product installed will compete with other anti-malware product(s), and can cause severe performance problems and system instability issues, and may limit the effectiveness of the products installed. Even if you attempt to have more than one product installed, with one active and another disabled, the disabled product will likely still have active components and/or drivers installed that will conflict with MSE. The important issue here is that any other product with real-time scanning will conflict with MSE (or any other real-time product).
However, you can have an on-demand scanner, such as Malwarebytes, installed. Malwarebytes offers two different scanners – one on-demand (free), and one real-time (paid). The on-demand scanner does not conflict with MSE’s real-time scanning.

Sorry Bruce, but I have to strongly disagree. As I type this, on my Windows 7 Pro 64Bit machine with 16GB RAM, I have the following running;
1. avast! Endpoint Protection
and
2. MalwareBytes AntiMalware Premium

I’ve been running under this configuration for a couple of years now and never a problem. I’ve tested performance by disabling both avast! Endpoint Protection and MalwareBytes from loading completely and no noticeable performance difference whatsoever. In my opinion, your information / conclusions are flawed.

Regards,

Andy

I have had to make use of Malwarebytes a few times to get rid of something evil that has sneaked upon me

As have many of us I’m sure

Since I have read in the past that some of those security programs will not run well together, I’d appreciate if somebody could tell me what works with what and what does NOT work together?

I cant speak for all security programs, but I’ve installed MalwareBytes Anti Malware Premium on many a PC alongside other security products over a long period of time with no noticeable effect on performance. The one’s I can vouch for that MalwareBytes works well with include;

Avast Pro
Norton 360
AVG
Microsoft Security Essentials (with Windows Defender disabled)
Webroot
iolo System Mechanic

.. and a few others, the names which slip my mind at the moment. I’ve always found MalwareBytes to be very well behaved running alongside other security products.

I’d suggest trying out MalwareBytes Premium with Real Time protection enabled alongside NIS and see if you get any noticeable performance hit. If not, then keep using. MalwareBytes is an excellent anti malware tool that has picked up in the wild nasties on many a PC for me over the years.

Cheers..

Thanks Berton, I did find the Garamond Font by Monotype and it does indeed look identical (well to me anyway) as the one used in the document / contract that I had professionally written for me. I can now make changes without destroying the professional look of the document.

Many thanks.. Problem solved!

Andrew

But be aware, Chrome is a HUGE memory hog.

I’ll second that for sure.. my solution (though not just for Chrome – I like to play with multiple VM’s open at the same time) was to bump my W7 Pro 64bit system’s RAM to 20GB.

RAM is cheap enough these days and having done that lets me continue to enjoy Chrome without the aggravation when I only had about 8 GB in the machine

Cheers..

Everything you always wanted to know about avast! GrimeFighter, but were afraid to ask!

Hope this helps…

From my own standpoint, Grimefighter does anything but one of the claims on the website you pointed to Rick – specifically “Yes, GrimeFighter will speed your old laptop up ..etc etc..”

I’ve had clients not being able to restart their computers back into Windows after the thing installed, others have complained that it slowed their computers down to a crawl. I tell all my clients to always do a custom install and deselect it, not allowing it to install at all, or if upgrading and it installs itself automatically, go back into change programs and uninstall the thing as soon as possible.

Causes far more problems than it purports to repair in my experience and only recommended for highly tech savvy computer users in my experience(s) with it.

Avast should be ashamed of themselves for ever introducing the thing in the first place – especially making it a default install rather than providing an option to install it or not during an upgrade. Same with their software updater and browser cleanup garbage. They should just stick to what they’re good at – Virus, Trojan and Malware protection. Many a product has been totally ruined over the years because for the sake of increasing profit margins, the authors try to make it do what it was never designed to do in the first place.

Cheers..

Cheers..

The latest scam I have encountered occurred very recently.

I received an Email supposedly from the USPS.COM. It wasn’t .
The Email said: “Your parcel has arrived at June 2nd, 2014. Courier was
unable to deliver the parcel to you. (etc. etc.)
flavet

This is hardly new or recent. UPS have been the victims of Spammers / Scammers / Fraudsters for years now.

Check out these links..

http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/resources/ship/fraud_ups_recognize.html

http://www.ups.com/media/en/fraud_email_examples.pdf

Much more info in google going back to the year 2000 or so.

Well done on spotting the fake though.

Cheers..

I find “Wondershare PDF Converter” to do a great job at converting PDF’s to Word / Excel / PowerPoint / HTML etc.. It came as a bonus with another piece of software I purchased sometime ago and I’ve used it quite a bit since. Been useful for me but your mileage may vary – might be worth a look? Find it here;

http://www.wondershare.com/pdf-converter/

Cheers..

As Fred Langa has said: Microsoft Security Essentials is free, in widespread use, and it has proven itself in the real world. And on most systems, it has little effect on system resources.

Heh.. MSE also has little effect on prevention as well imo. Take a look at the monthly “Real-World Protection Tests” they do here;

http://www.av-comparatives.org/dynamic-tests/

Microsoft’s Anti-Virus protection offerings score so low that AV Comparatives generally don’t even bother including MSE results in their published result charts. I’ve been a follower and fan of Fred Langa’s recommendations for a long time, but on this issue (as well as automatic software updating software) I think he’s got it completely wrong. Guess we can’t all agree on everything hey?

Which one would you recommend?

For a Free AV, Avast would be my personal recommendation.

Though I mostly install the Pro or EndPoint Protection versions of their software because I install to machines that are often used for both personal & commercial purposes, the definition files the Free version uses are identical and the product has served me (and several clients / companies I look after) well for quite a few years now. My only minor beef with it is that it can sometimes be a bit pedantic in thinking things are a Virus when they’re not (False Positives) but it’s not that big of a problem where frequently annoys me.

If you can manage to spend a few bucks for a commercial AV instead, take a look at a few of the monthly reports at the AV Comparatives link I’ve provided above and make your own mind up. The subscription costs for most are very reasonable and renewal fees are pretty much trivial, especially when purchased in 2 or 3 year blocks.

Cheers..