dprout69

I got it too. Hey Malwarebytes... do you know why I keep this program installed on my computer? Why I have a paid version? Because I dont want unnecessary pop ups and Malwarebytes fits that bill until they dont any longer. Maybe it was a mistake. I certainly hope it was. However you need to understand that my computer is not a billboard. If Im blocking ads, marketing and other non essential nonsense then stuff like this certainly falls into that category. Notify me if you find something. Notify me if something needs attention, but otherwise leave me alone. It's almost like the marketing department is in competition with actual IT at your business and they are constantly trying to find a new way around the protections put in place to leave the customers alone.

Im old enough to remember when you used to call a customer service number and someone would pick up the phone. Thats right! You wouldn't have to press anything on your phone except the number to call them. They then started to incorporate the press 1 to do this and press 2 for that, but they always gave you 0 for customer service or an operator. In later years, they began leaving off the option to press 0, but 0 still worked. During the beginning of the pandemic, A LOT of companies started to make it next to impossible to get to speak to anyone live without smashing your head into the phone and hopefully and randomly unlocking the magical world of customer service. In the last year, companies have begun hiding their phone numbers altogether and further dont offer anything else like email and chat. They dont even offer a way to get a hold of them anymore. This needs to stop. Mark my words the next phase will be AI telling you, "No we dont owe you a refund and further we are going to deduct a fee from your account just for using AI. Do you agree?" "If you say another word it will be considered verbal consent." "If you say nothing it will be verbal consent." "If you hangup it will be verbal consent..." Seriously guys, we are all responsible for the world we are creating and living in... customer service is a very small price to pay for sanity.

Why wouldnt you? Protection is about layers. The more layers that you can add that work together without problems then the safer your computer is. MB works without any issues with other programs so you are better off with more. However, if you want, you can certainly just use MB... you of course then lower your layered protection. Simple question to ask yourself... you have two bodyguards, one is watching your front and one is watching your back... do you feel safe not having one or the other? Thats your call.

Just my two cents, but in addition to this "a quick way to open the program and scan and to advise yo when there is a new version", I use it just to keep my computers even and consistent. I have 3 computers, two have licenses and one is free. When I boot up and there is an icon missing in the system tray (because I quickly notice the inconsistency) then I immediately go into the checklist of ok wtf isnt working now. Having the computers consistent stops me from having to go down the checklist on 3 machines, counting and identifying icons and trying to think ok this machine has this and that machine has that and is everything booted up... bottom line having them all the same I can quickly identify everyone is up and running at a glance.

I have the setting "Notify me when a new version is available" turned off and so of course it decided to notify me anyway with a toaster popup. Fix it please. Thank you Version 4.4.4.126 1.0.44240 1.0.1413

That's what I'm saying though. It wasnt greyed out at all prior to January... 100% certain. For me it didnt look like that until I uninstalled it this week and then reinstalled. This is a fairly recent change. The screenshot I attached was from the security and Maintenance section in old control panel. MB Free has been uninstalled so I dont know what the newer Security screen showed

@Porthos I appreciate your persistence and dedication to MB over the years. As stated though, seriously I've had enough with trying to troubleshoot this software. As mentioned, this System Tray issue has been ongoing for probably 8 years. Same scenario over and over. They break it, they fix it maybe a month or two later. It's ok for six months and then they break it again. It isnt solely my computer, there are tons of postings on this and I would dare say it's probably the biggest, reoccurring problem this software has dealt with in its history. I dont have faith that MB will fix this "once and for all", with or without my help. They have fixed it before and they will break it again. I understand there are a lot of different computers out here and a lot of different setups, but ultimately they are trying to integrate with windows and that is common to all. Whether it be the security center or system tray icons they have been designing this software long enough to get it right and unfortunately they dont... over and over again.

@ Porthos, I'm not entirely sure what you are saying is accurate. 1) I rebuilt my computers in January. I can 100% guarantee you that option was not a premium feature at that time or anytime before it. 2) Note that it is "greyed out" in the ON position. 3) I apologize I'm unable to take a screenshot of the affected computer as I've already uninstalled MB, however, as you see in the attached screenshot, the Virus Protection section shows as an item in security center allowing you to access Defenders security screen when it is not registered and then the entry is removed when MB is registered. On the affected computer Virus Protection was not there.

@Maurice Naggar I appreciate the response, but I think you are missing the big picture

Just noticed in the latest version that Register in the Security Center is now a premium feature? Firstly, are ya kidding me? Secondly, if this is meant as some kind of incentive to get people to want the paid version, it was counterproductive... I've uninstalled Free because of this and further, over the last couple of weeks I was actually thinking about purchasing another license and this irritated me so much I simply uninstalled it. Is this an oversight? Possibly someone has a different way of looking at this, but why would I want a program that has no real-time protection capability and which I only use as a secondary scanner to register itself as an ACTIVE security program? I would ask the decision makers to reverse this.

Further confirmed that if you stop MB from starting automatically on reboot or even uninstall it then the problem stops and all icons load correctly every time. In the past, the temporary answer has always been to turn off web protection if anyone needs a workaround. I personally am just turning MB off altogether until a fix comes.

So I've been with Malwarebytes a lot of years and I sincerely just dont have the patience, time or energy to troubleshoot this software any longer. Especially not a problem that seems to occur a couple of times a year, every single year. I also fail to understand why this is the only piece of software on my computer with which I continuously find issues. However, I just want to throw this out there and advise that I had no problems with my system tray icons prior to 6/25. 6/25 rolls around, new MB update comes out and now on three computers I have issues with system tray icons inconsistently loading after reboot. Battery icon, Wifi Icon, Snagit and Malwarebytes. For the MB one, it just happens on the free version on one computer... the other two premium load every time. I have done a clean install with the support tool and same results. Someone pass this on to the devs please and as per usual it will magically be fixed in a couple of months. Thanks Windows 64bit pro MB 4.4.2.123 1.0.42540 1.0.1358

I've been using since before it became part of Malwarebytes and it's awesome. Couldn't ask for a better piece of software. Nicely designed, non-invasive and the developer is very responsive to questions. @Porthos as far as "the need" it's to allow you to control outbound connections in the firewall and be notified, which normal windows firewall lacks badly. This software just adds that extra control over the existing windows firewall instead of having to install an entirely new firewall software. Windows firewall is very good as far as protection, just lacks certain basics. I use it constantly so there is definitely "a need". Biggest need number one is to control the biggest piece of spyware on your computer... WINDOWS. Secondly, if you have inadvertently installed a piece of malware on your computer, it may do damage locally, but firstly you'll be aware of it maybe a bit sooner because you'll get notifications that something is trying to connect outbound and it will be blocked. Secondly that it will not allow a connection to home base to try and download additional components or send your information to God knows who. Thirdly, it adds little things like context menu items where you can just click on a file and allow or block as opposed to having to open up windows firewall and adding manual entries. Fourthly, allows you to set profiles on the fly with a click in the system tray and finally allows you to review all connection attempts, inbound and outbound. It's good and I recommend to anyone just running windows firewall. I also recommend it to anyone that has installed a different firewall and are scratching their heads trying to figure out why is this so complex.

I had a desktop and laptop with 8 GBs of RAM. The system trays were both very slow on the order of 13 seconds. One day my desktop went down for the count permanently so I bought a new desktop and laptop (they were due for replacement). The processor speed and other hardware didnt really change much, but these new ones have 16GBs of RAM and Malwarebytes opens right up now instantly. Not sure how much you have as I didnt open the zip, but maybe time for an upgrade? I know Malwarebytes is very intensive on RAM to which I've complained on that as well. Even if it seems like you have a lot available it seems to want more. Right now it's using 3 times greater than my next highest program which is Windows Defender (which you can assume is already using a lot).

Just updated to 4.2.3 and all issues appear to be gone. Seems like a stable build other than some odd behavior when it was installing, but that seems to be par for the course. Penetration *giggity* testing has been moved to advanced exploit... is it not a good idea to turn that back on? Im pretty sure that was on by default in the last version I was using 4.2.1 and it was running fine. Anyone else using it?