Malwarebytes self-start problem

[bit]

My box is an AMD 4400+ dual-core running Win7Pro 32-bit with 3GB ram, and it has all it can handle running Norton 360 Premium Edition, plus CryptoPrevent and one or two other anti-malware programs.
I also installed the paid version of Malwarebytes, but found that this overloaded the OS during web surfing so much that the OS began crashing with BSOD on a daily basis.
So I searched for and found how to click on the option for Malwarebytes not to auto-start with OS start-up.
That way, I could activate it as I felt it was needed and also run scans and updates, but keep it off and in reserve most of the time to avoid the BSOD.
I found that if after every BSOD I ran CCleaner and then created a new System Restore Point, my OS recovers consistently, but it's sort of a 'given' that this is pushing my luck and the OS can only take so many BSODs before it fails to reboot anyway, which fortunately hasn't happened in quite a long time now.

The problem is that even with Malwarebytes set to not auto-start with boot-up, it stays off for anywhere from 3 to 6 or 8 minutes, then self-starts anyway completely unnoticed by me and often causing system overload and a BSOD.

It's gotten to the point that I'm considering uninstalling Malwarebytes to keep it from doing that.
I like Malwarebytes, and don't want to do that, and was hoping for any suggestions before I pull the plug on it?

[eleman]

It's a common problem that occurs when you do not have enough antivirus and antimalware.
Try adding a couple more, and you should have a completely unusable computer, instead of a partially messed up one.

Sorry for the sarcasm but couldn't help.

[wraith808]

It's a common problem that occurs when you do not have enough antivirus and antimalware.
Try adding a couple more, and you should have a completely unusable computer, instead of a partially messed up one.

Sorry for the sarcasm but couldn't help.

The ones that he's quoted so far are meant to be run at the same time since they cover different areas.

As far as Malwarebytes, there's a resident service that starts the app if it isn't running as a preventative against virii that shut down your protection.  In the menu it's referred to as the self-protection module.  Do you have this enabled?  And did you disable startup from within the app, or some other way?

[bit]

It's a common problem that occurs when you do not have enough antivirus and antimalware.
Try adding a couple more, and you should have a completely unusable computer, instead of a partially messed up one.

Sorry for the sarcasm but couldn't help.

The ones that he's quoted so far are meant to be run at the same time since they cover different areas.

As far as Malwarebytes, there's a resident service that starts the app if it isn't running as a preventative against virii that shut down your protection.  In the menu it's referred to as the self-protection module.  Do you have this enabled?  And did you disable startup from within the app, or some other way?

Thank you very much, and I hated very much to untick the self-protection module, but a daily dose of BSODs is nothing to trifle with.
At least I did not have to completely uninstall it, and can still start it manually sometimes, and also do manual scans.

To eleman: your remark reminds me of an old Mad Magazine suggested cure for a broken leg; break other leg. =>

[bit]

It's a common problem that occurs when you do not have enough antivirus and antimalware.
Try adding a couple more, and you should have a completely unusable computer, instead of a partially messed up one.

Sorry for the sarcasm but couldn't help.

The ones that he's quoted so far are meant to be run at the same time since they cover different areas.

As far as Malwarebytes, there's a resident service that starts the app if it isn't running as a preventative against virii that shut down your protection.  In the menu it's referred to as the self-protection module.  Do you have this enabled?  And did you disable startup from within the app, or some other way?

Nope, I unticked the self-protection module in advanced settings, and it's still self-starting.
I do hate to speak like this of disabling such important software, but it's either that or get BSODs on an almost daily basis.

[wraith808]

It's a common problem that occurs when you do not have enough antivirus and antimalware.
Try adding a couple more, and you should have a completely unusable computer, instead of a partially messed up one.

Sorry for the sarcasm but couldn't help.

The ones that he's quoted so far are meant to be run at the same time since they cover different areas.

As far as Malwarebytes, there's a resident service that starts the app if it isn't running as a preventative against virii that shut down your protection.  In the menu it's referred to as the self-protection module.  Do you have this enabled?  And did you disable startup from within the app, or some other way?

Nope, I unticked the self-protection module in advanced settings, and it's still self-starting.
I do hate to speak like this of disabling such important software, but it's either that or get BSODs on an almost daily basis.

Did you check to see if there is a related service that starts?

On mine, it seems that I have MBAMScheduler and MBAMService.  You could play around with those.

[bit]

I continue to get daily crashes and BSODs.
I do want MWbytes available for occasional manual scans, but this is not cool.
Whenever MWbytes is running, everything I click on takes an extra 5 or 6 seconds to react.
Even opening a folder and clicking on a txt file adds 6 seconds for each action.
Obviously I'm running a slightly outdated box.
So I hunted in the menus and found some more MWbytes protections to untick.
So now MWbytes runs a delayed start icon in the system tray with a red circle and an exclamation point (!) over the blue icon to tell me "I'm your mother! How could you do this to me!" (shades of Sarah Connor talking to her iguana lizard Pugsley in the aparto kitchenette scene of 'The Terminator'; "There you are, young man. You mind your mother").
This would be comic if it wasn't so tragic; playing games to outwit protection I know I need and can't allow to run or I'll be computing in molasses and staring at nonstop BSODs.
We'll see if things settle down a little more now.

[wraith808]

Have you tried to contact support?

[J-Mac]

How do you know the BSODs are caused by Malwarebytes or the other security programs?

I've been suffering BSODs for about a year now - allegedly caused by a "third party driver". I've updated all drivers I can find to update, tested my memory and HDDs multiple times... Still getting the BSODs. It is almost impossible to find the driver or drivers at fault! Along the way throughout all my searching for a solution I have found that Windows 7x64 seems to be experiencing this issue more than other OS versions.

Jim

[wraith808]

How do you know the BSODs are caused by Malwarebytes or the other security programs?

I've been suffering BSODs for about a year now - allegedly caused by a "third party driver". I've updated all drivers I can find to update, tested my memory and HDDs multiple times... Still getting the BSODs. It is almost impossible to find the driver or drivers at fault! Along the way throughout all my searching for a solution I have found that Windows 7x64 seems to be experiencing this issue more than other OS versions.

Jim

The Event Viewer.  There are also a couple of utilities that let you see the actual bsod and cause in place- for example BlueScreenView.

[J-Mac]

I've used the Event viewer and BlueScreenView, along with "Who Crashed" and several diagnostic utilities. Unfortunately they usually cannot point out the actual driver causing the problem that led to the crash - only the Windows system driver that ultimately shut down the system. E.g., this phrase, or a similar version of it, is used in most of the diagnostics I have tried: "This problem is most likely caused by another driver on your system which cannot be identified at this time."

I have identified 22 separate drivers that have initiated BSODs, plus several others supposedly caused by the kernel, ntoskrnl.exe, though all checks and tests state that another 3rd party driver is actually causing the kernel to shut down. I tried sussing this out by myself long enough and I'm officially throwing in the towel and letting Puget Systems figure it out!

Thank you.

Jim

[bit]

For me, the BSOD causative IDing process is mostly experimental guesswork.
My entire OS slowed down so that there was about a 3 to 5 second delay in response time, and the only real change I had made recently was that I had added Malwarebytes.
When I uninstalled Malwarebytes as an experiment, the delay all but disappeared.
Since my machine is about 6 years old, I fault my aging hardware, not Malwarebytes.

The BSODs continued to happen after uninstall of Malwarebytes, so there had to be another cause.
Having removed Malwarebytes and still getting BSODs, I added a ram booster, MZ Ram, which failed to eliminate the BSODs.
It seemed to happen anytime after running TOR Vidalia (which incorporates an integral stripped down or locked down anti-stalker version of Firefox that won't play videos), plus a fully functional version of Firefox that does play videos, which seems to destabilize the OS resulting in BSODs.
Switching exclusively to Seamonkey for a time seemed to prove this out because I mostly stopped getting BSODs.
Then my Java ran a self-update, and most of the BSODs went away even with TOR Vidalia and running videos with full Firefox mode.
So I kind of fault the Java as having been in need of an update, but I'm only guessing.

My box is an AMD 4400+ dual core with 3GB ram and a slightly newer video card, so it's getting old, and if I could get a new box I would not hesitate to reinstall Malwarebytes.
I paid for Malwarebytes and value it highly and regret not running it because it slows down my older box so much.
But it is so persistent on 'protecting' me even when it's in 'deactivated mode' -a very good 'nanny' feature- that I have not reinstalled it yet.
There is also still the off chance that Malwarebytes may have been a contributing factor in the BSODs due to the huge 3 to 5 second delay it caused my OS and anything I click on.

I mean, anything I clicked on, even a simple .txt file, would produce that huge delay before opening.
It made my entire OS react that way.

[bit]

I used to get 'failure to reboot' way too often after a BSOD and have to do a complete backup restore of my OS from a slightly outdated copy of my OS saved on a backup HD.
I seem to have eliminated the 'failure to reboot' now though; what I do, immediately after a successful reboot to Desktop from a BSOD, first I run CCleaner, then I run a fresh 'create a restore point'.
For others who are 'computer challenged' like me, you access that by clicking on 'Start' and typing 'create' in the little window, and it pops up the option to 'create a restore point'.
That's all I do, and my OS pretty much always recovers successfully from BSODs (Blue Screen Of Death).
Gone are the old Win98 days when a crash meant an hour or more of manually finding and reloading the video drivers before I could even begin the grinding process of totally reinstalling Win98.

[bit]

Viewing videos in Firefox through TOR Vidalia, the Adobe Flash plugin has been really crashy lately.

[tomos]

Viewing videos in Firefox through TOR Vidalia, the Adobe Flash plugin has been really crashy lately.

for a long time now, I've been having trouble with flash and firefox (no TOR involved).
Unfortunately Pale Moon + Flash is not hitting the spot either...

Edit// no blue screens with either but both bad enough to want me to move on to something else (have to think where to go to now...)

[bit]

I keep hoping Sandra Bullock's role in 'The Net' will turn out to be legit and that she'll turn up any moment now and solve all our problems.

[Shades]

Sounds like your hard disk is failing (as in generating lots of Disk I/O for no apparent reason. With a tool such as Process Explorer you can see a rather high value appear at list item 'Interrupts'. It also tracks disk I/O for you.

If you see this, get a replacement for your hard disk and start transferring your data and/or installed software to the new one. You can also try to clone your old disk onto the new one (if the new drive is the same size or bigger than the old one) with a tool such as 'HDClone' or 'Clonezilla' You will be happy when you did. And likely enjoying your system for quite a while still.

[Cuffy]

Your timing for a drive failure is better than mine!
Newegg.com newsletter today lists a Seagate 1 TB for $50??
I bought one a couple of months ago for much more.

[bit]

^Some of the newer and larger HDs have enough built-in CPU power to rival entire early computers.

[bit]

Update: it was my Western Digital Caviar Black 750gb 3.5 7200rpm internal hard drive that kept giving me daily BSODs, and running MalwareBytes on it made the entire OS slow down noticeably.
So yesterday I switched to my newer Western Digital 250gb 3.5 10,000rpm drive, got sparkling performance back even with MalwareBytes running and so far no BSODs.
Kind of makes me wonder if Shades might be right about the slower drive getting ready to croak; but then again, a scan with Belarch said the slower drive was healthy.

Here's an interesting article on 'short stroking' a rotary hard drive;
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/short-stroking-hdd,2157-2.html

I skimmed it, but didn't quite understand it exactly.
I only need about 250GB of useful storage space on a drive for my size OS.
Is there any chance of me 'short stroking' my Western Digital 750GB 7200rpm drive, and would it make it as 'fast' or 'faster' than the 10K one?

[bit]

Here's a bit more elucidation about 'short stroking' a hard drive:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/255224/how_to_partition_your_hard_drive_to_optimize_performance.html

[bit]

Here's a more current article on short stroking a hard drive, with a link to a product for doing it;
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-short-stroke-your-hard-drive-for-optimal-speed-1598306074
"How to Short-Stroke Your Hard Drive for Optimal Speed"; dated 07-01-14 which is pretty up-to-date.
It contains a sub-link to HD TUNE, which has a less-options freebie or a 'pro' version for $34.95 .
I'm airing this here, altho it almost deserves a new thread for itself, b/c I'm curious what cheaper but comparable alternative programs to the payware 'HD TUNE' Pro might be around?

I'm also curious what anyone thinks of using HD Tune to short stroke a Western Digital 750GB 7200rpm drive down to about 200 or 250GB.

Here's the Western Digital drive, and I see they discontinued the 750 size;
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Desktop-WD1002FAEX/dp/B0036Q7MV0/ref=pd_cp_e_1
The specs say it has 'an integrated dual processor, and dual actuator technology'.
I'm not sure what 'dual actuator' means, but the 'dual processor' sounds way cool.

One of the reasons I originally got the WD 750GB was b/c it had a 64MB cache which when repartitioned down to 250GB gave me a larger cache plus the on-board dual processor on a resized smaller drive partition.  
But now with 'short stroking' as an option, I could do even more with it.

[tomos]

I didnt get a chance to read any of those^ links yet, but I remember when 2TB drives came out, reading an article saying that if you made a smallish partition, say 150GB, that the speed of that partition would be a lot faster - the claim was along the lines of: the bigger the drive, the faster that partition would be. But I dont know how multiple platters fit into that.

I have two internal  drives on my desktop - the OS on the first drive has about a 150GB partition, the remainder is used for backup of data from the second drive - which means it gets used very seldom. I'm happy with the setup, but I've never compared it to any other setup in the same machine.

Will look for that article - I may have saved it on that machine.

[Shades]

S.M.A.R.T. technology that comes with every hard disk is used by software to indicate if the drive is healthy or not. I have here several drives that are perfect according to S.M.A.R.T., but in practice make your PC slow down to a crawl. I have learned to take any "advice" from HD health monitoring software with a grain of salt.

If the drive starts generating a lot of IRQ's...it is dying and definitely not to be trusted with important information.. Whether it is the drive (platters) itself or its electronics, it is dying. Time to get a new drive, clone the content from the failing one and when that's finished successfully, take it out and smash it to pieces/use it for target practice, squash it with your truck or whatever. It's not worth your time and you will be really miserable when spending hours trying to recover data from an almost dead drive...the proverbial sh?t and a fan.

For fun, you should download the MHDD iso, make a bootable disk/pendrive from it and use it to really verify the state of the hard disk. This software is very low level, it forgoes almost all hardware layers, the software allows just the BIOS to connect to the drive and takes over from that point.

Depending on the speed, size and health of the disk, a full check-up can take some time, but its results are brutally honest.

[bit]

^Yes, many tnx, I've already taken your advice and migrated from the BSOD-prone 750GB Western Digital to the 10,000 rpm 250GB WD.
I will have to see about downloading MHDD and checking out the 750GB HD.

I do all my HD disk cloning now with EaseUS Todo Backup Free 4.0, whether copying the active HD to a backup HD, or restoring a goofed-up active HD from a backup HD.
And I use freeware EaseUS Partition Master 9.1.1 Home Edition for HD partitioning.
Both work great and are free for home use.

Every time I run a backup restore from my reserve IDE Maxtor HD back to either my 750GB 7200 rpm WD (Western Ditigal) or my 250GB 10K rpm WD SATA HD, Win7 makes me put in my installation disk to fix the boot files, which it always does and then boots up successfully.

But when I try to do a backup restore and boot with my 500GB 7200 rpm WD, even with the Win7 install disk, it fails to boot now.
It used to succeed when I first bought it and did an original scratch install of Win7 to it.
It's a good drive, and makes a good reserve OS backup unit, but there seems to be some kind of problem generating a viable MBR for it.