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[Jeff P]

I recently installed a new paid for version of Malwarebytes. The newer version has the standard Malwarebytes and the Browser Anti-Exploit combined into a single package. Initially thought this was kind of cool. (Previous versions of Malwarebytes I had been running had these as two separate packages.)

Almost immediately after the install my machine began running noticeably slower.

A quick look at the performance tab in Task Manager showed (literally) almost no free ram (and at all times.) The lone exception being right after a machine restart.

However, subsequent checks a few minutes after each restart showed the machine to have run out of free ram again.

A look at the processes tab in Task Manager after checking the show processes all users box didn't reveal any unusual processes.

Yet based on the performance of the machine and the fact that the machine had no free ram (literally) at all times suggested something must be running in the background (eating up available ram.)

I say that because prior to installing Malwarebytes - unless I had a zillion program windows open - whenever I'd look at the performance tab in Task Manager the machine almost always had at least 2 gigabytes of free ram.

After operating my now sluggish machine for a day and a half (a machine that had previously been lightning fast btw) I decided to make a good faith effort to eliminate possible causes through process of elimination.

I began testing everything on the machine that had recently changed. This included Windows Updates, browser updates - and finally Malwarebytes.

After eliminating Windows Updates and updates to Chrome and Firefox as possible causes:

I tried bringing up Task Manager, going to the processes tab, right clicking Malwarebytes, and ending the process.

As soon as I did that - Malwarebytes auto-loaded itself as a new process (causing my machine to lock up/freeze for several seconds.) A quick look at the performance tab in Task Manager afterwards revealed the machine had run out of free ram again.

I repeated this step several times (in hopes I could test the amount of free ram on my machine without Malwarebytes running) to no avail.

So I went into Control Panel and uninstalled Malwarebytes -- followed by a restart.

After restarting the machine and allowing it to go through its boot up cycle:

I went into Task Manager, clicked the processes tab, checked the display processes all users box, scrolled through the processes - and confirmed Malwarebytes was no longer running.

A look at the performance tab in Task Manager showed the machine had (its normal) more than 2 gigabytes of free ram once again.

And of course the machine was now running lightning fast again. (As has been the case since I uninstalled Malwarebytes.)

Malwarebytes had always been one of those programs I considered indispensable.

But if running it means slowing every machine I install it on to a crawl:

How indispensable can it really be?

Most concerning to me is that after installing Malwarebytes -- something was obviously running in the background and (literally) eating all of the machine's free ram.

But whatever that something was - it certainly wasn't showing up on the processes tab in Task Manager.

Has anybody else recently installed Malwarebytes and experienced something similar?



-jp

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