Avira Free and MBAM Pro Warning!

[greyowl]

I have been wondering about the feasibility of running Avira Free and MBAM Pro both in real-time. On the Avira forum, I read the following:

"Avira doesn't recommend to install any other antivirus software along with any product of Avira, regardless of developer. The reason for this is that if both products have their automatic (real-time) protection switched on, then those products which don't encrypt the virus strings within them, could cause that other antivirus products to generate "false positives". It can also lead to a clash, as both products fight for access to files which are opened again in their resident / real-time protection. In general terms, the two antivirus softwares may conflict and cause:

• False Positives: When the antivirus software tells you that your PC has a virus, when it actually doesn't.
  
• System Performance Problems: Your system may lock up due to both products attempting to access the same file at the same time. Also it could cause some instability, crashing your computer, some slow performance and waste your system resources."
  

It goes on to say:

"Although there have been no reports of incompatibilities among the real-time protection of MBAM (Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware) and Avira, the real-time protection of MBAM is not an official recommendation from Avira."

So, I am wondering how serious is this potential problem. I only have dialup internet so don't want to slow my browsing or produce false positives.

[daledoc1]

Hi again, greyowl:

You'll likely want to wait for an Avira user and/or MBAM staffer for more specific advice.

However:

1) MBAM is not an anti-virus, but rather a specialized anti-malware program that is designed specifically to run alongside a standard AV to provide complementary, layered protection for malware, trojans, etc;

2) Many of the big AV publishers display similar types of alarmist warnings on their websites -- these are often based on older versions of both their product and MBAM and are generally no longer true; certainly an occasional user might run into issues, but I would expect that to be the exception, not the rule, especially since the MBAM engineers test their software with all the major AV programs;

3) As long as you set the reciprocal permissions and exclusions between Avira and MBAM, you will probably be just fine -- the instructions for doing so were provided in a reply to one of your other, related topics HERE;

4) Several of the members in another of your topics HERE suggested that Avira and MBAM should be fine together;

Nothing is guaranteed, as everyone's computer (hardware, software, peripherals, etc) is unique -- however, I would expect that it should be fine.

If you need help with installing MBAM and Avira, and/or with setting the permissions and exclusions, please post back and someone will be happy to assist you.

HTH,

daledoc1

[greyowl]

Thank you again for your help.

[greyowl]

Thank you for the information and help.

[AdvancedSetup]

False Positive are a known nature of the game and every Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware product out there has them bar none even with no other security product installed alongside them.

Many of the larger vendors have really started going heavy into Anti-Malware starting last year and as a consequence have beefed up both warnings and automated removal tools that either tell you that you have to remove other security software or it does it automatically for you when you install it or it won't install until you do remove the other software. Seems a bit too controlling for me.

My take on it is that some of it may be coming from the fact that times are tough and everyone is fighting for market share. If you go back a few years none of the big players even really mentioned much about malware and now days all of them are very heavy into marketing and making sure you know that they deal with it. I'd like to think we had a big part in that change as we overlapped the Anti-Virus and more and more there were less and less real viruses and more and more malware which we have been better at detecting and removing than most of the big vendors. There is still a good solid need to keep an Anti-Virus program.

In most cases when setup properly Malwarebytes Ant-Malware will work properly alongside most Anti-Virus programs without producing false positives, hangs, freezes, etc. Some AV products though are certainly more difficult to setup exclusions and some of them actually don't even honor their own settings in the program which can cause problems at times for other software on your computer that is not even related to security software if it keeps scanning or blocking it even when you tell it not to do it. So there is certainly always a possibility of false positives - but in our testing we've not been able to substantiate the warnings made. I can understand though that no other vendor wants to say for a fact that their software will work 100% with another security product as it take a lot of time, money, and resources to validate something like that - yet there is no monetary gain by doing so.

[sho-dan]

Good read Ron, this could make a good sticky about MBAMpro and other vendors security programs compatibility warnings in the FAQ- Common Issues, Questions and their Solutions topic.

I have'nt had any type of conflicts or FP in the past four years using MBAMpro and Antivr free.

[daledoc1]

Good read Ron, this could make a good sticky about MBAMpro and other vendors security programs compatibility warnings in the FAQ- Common Issues, Questions and their Solutions topic.

I agree!

Excellent idea!

[greyowl]

Thank you so much for clarifying this issue.