Malwarebytes & Windows defender?

Hello hello,
New win 10 user here and need to ask a question.

I had defender running, I installed Malwarebytes (paid) and defender has shut itself down I think?
No matter what I do I can not start it up. And I keep getting notifications to install an AV program or enable Defender. (which is annoying)
At the top of windows setting page for defender it says "some settings are managed by your organization" in red.
Dont know what that means either.
Any and all help appreciated.

Hi:

MBAM (Free or Premium) is not an AV.
It does not report to the Windows Action Center.
And it does not disable Windows Defender (Win 8/8.1/10) or any other AV when installed.
To the contrary, it is designed to run alongside the popular AVs, to provide complementary, layered protection against certain types of zero-hour and zero-day, non-viral malware missed by the AVs.

So, something else is probably mucking up your Windows Defender.

As I am not on Win 10, I'll defer to other members to assist with that...
(But it sounds as if you might be infected, or have Group Policies in place set by your employer, if this is a work machine.)

Cheers,

MM

bobbagels said:

hello hello,
when I open the run command and type gpedit.msc it says it can not be found
This is not the pro version
I have scanned with Malwarebytes. It says Im clean

​I went to one of those links you provided and download the reg fix but it didnt do anything
I see when I go to services windows defender service is off. When I try to start the service I get what is in the pic

Did you ever resolve this issue?
I had this same problem with Malwarebytes when still on Windows 8.1. After several months of playing nice together, Windows Defender just suddenly stopped working. After hours on the phone with Microsoft tech support and Malwarebytes support, I was getting nowhere. Finally Microsoft elevated my ticket and remotely took over my machine. They confirmed that Malwarebytes had caused the problem and was deactivating Windows Defender (don't ask me how they determined that). The only way to resolve the issue.... a complete clean install (thank God I had remote data backups). Unfortunately Malwarebytes support kept insisting that the two were compatible, but never actually offered a working solution to the problem. I spent days trying to resolve this trying all sorts of things they asked me to do, before I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the clean install.

I own a lifetime Malwarebytes license, but after that experience I am terrified to activate it now that I'm running Windows 10. I know plenty of people say that the two run perfectly fine side by side, and in fact mine did for a number of months until the problem popped up; but when the problem arose, there was no real solution. Seeing your post about this same problem on Windows 10 makes me even more skeptical. So were you able to resolve this? Or is it still a nightmare?

My understanding is that the free MBAM, which does not run in the background, works well with Defender. I have used them together for years with no problem.

It would appear from this and other posts that the paid version of MBAM is expanding its power.

I used to run the free AVG, but I had three or four free AVs for occasional scans. One by one, they began fighting to become my primary AV, refusing to turn off and refusing to let the others work.

I am using the paid for version of MBAM along side WD without any problems........

Must have been something else involved in messing up the system files........am curious to see if anyone gets to the bottom of this....

Hi there
I'm not really sure if MBAM actually offers anything if you are running Windows defender which actually does its job pretty well.

Common sense, regular CLEAN backups safe surfing / emailing etc will probably keep your computer safe these days --Windows defender is probably as good as it gets now for DOMESTIC (I.e not Enterprise strength) type of protection.

As in all these things YMMV - but in my experience - and I've used zillions of computers from DOS -->Windows 3.0/3.11 ---> W10 and have never encountered any problem that a clean restore won't fix -- and prior to Win 8 there really wasn't any built in AV program at all. These days attacks are more sophisticated - but rather than Viruses most attacks aren't really concerned with damaging the OS but are trying to glean sensitive data off your machine such as Bank details etc.

PUPS and Rogue websites are a bigger threat than Viruses these days - and if a PUP is "Well written" !!!! In other words if it conforms reasonably to Windows published API's then it's very hard to distinguish between a PUP and a legitimate windows executable.

MBAM can keep some details in its data base but you can also do a lot yourself by looking at your Router Logs regularly and blocking any program from acessing the net / or any outgoing PORT on your computer until you give it specific permission.

I use a Linux server as my internet gateway and can record web site and IP accesses (or access attempts). You can easily set up a PROXY SERVER on your Windows machine too.

Since Win 7 Ms has come a long way in making Windows more secure -- what Ms can't do of course is protect YOU from YOURSELF.

NEVER open dubious email attachments - especially with weird file types, and above all if you see email for "Payment details" from people you haven't done any business with, or emails from "look alike sites" such as Banks, Police, Tax authorities etc requesting payments, password details etc.

Another scam doing the rounds is say you have work done by plumber joe bloggs. An email arrives purporting to be from joe blogs requesting you pay the money into a new Bank account. NEVER EVER DO THAT until you have verified with the Real Joe Bloggs that he has changed Bank accounts -- in my experience tradespeople rarely change banks between the start and end of the work done for you.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Hi there
I'm not really sure if MBAM actually offers anything if you are running Windows defender which actually does its job pretty well.

Common sense, regular CLEAN backups safe surfing / emailing etc will probably keep your computer safe these days --Windows defender is probably as good as it gets now for DOMESTIC (I.e not Enterprise strength) type of protection.

As in all these things YMMV - but in my experience - and I've used zillions of computers from DOS -->Windows 3.0/3.11 ---> W10 and have never encountered any problem that a clean restore won't fix -- and prior to Win 8 there really wasn't any built in AV program at all. These days attacks are more sophisticated - but rather than Viruses most attacks aren't really concerned with damaging the OS but are trying to glean sensitive data off your machine such as Bank details etc.

PUPS and Rogue websites are a bigger threat than Viruses these days - and if a PUP is "Well written" !!!! In other words if it conforms reasonably to Windows published API's then it's very hard to distinguish between a PUP and a legitimate windows executable.

MBAM can keep some details in its data base but you can also do a lot yourself by looking at your Router Logs regularly and blocking any program from acessing the net / or any outgoing PORT on your computer until you give it specific permission.

I use a Linux server as my internet gateway and can record web site and IP accesses (or access attempts). You can easily set up a PROXY SERVER on your Windows machine too.

Since Win 7 Ms has come a long way in making Windows more secure -- what Ms can't do of course is protect YOU from YOURSELF.

NEVER open dubious email attachments - especially with weird file types, and above all if you see email for "Payment details" from people you haven't done any business with, or emails from "look alike sites" such as Banks, Police, Tax authorities etc requesting payments, password details etc.

Another scam doing the rounds is say you have work done by plumber joe bloggs. An email arrives purporting to be from joe blogs requesting you pay the money into a new Bank account. NEVER EVER DO THAT until you have verified with the Real Joe Bloggs that he has changed Bank accounts -- in my experience tradespeople rarely change banks between the start and end of the work done for you.

Cheers
jimbo

Thanks everyone for chiming in.

I too am curious what exactly caused the problem, especially since they were working together fine for a number of months. I didn't have any other anti-virus/spam/spyware programs installed. I feel like either Microsoft or Malwarebytes released an update that screwed something up and just didn't want to admit it? I don't know.

I assumed that Windows Defender is probably sufficient for my personal use. I'm pretty good about data backups and I'm paranoid about e-mail and programs. I do have the free version of Malwarebytes installed that I occasionally use to do a manual scan; I guess just as a precaution. That doesn't seem to cause any problems. But like I said, I'm scared to use my lifetime activation given my past experience. I suppose that I'll just maintain Windows Defender and save my Malwarebytes activation for using maybe in the future.