Windows XP hangs immediately after boot - Malwarebytes task is the culprit

[ronk]

I purchased several copies of Malwarebytes about 10 days ago.

I installed it on all of my home computer network machines

(all are Win XP SP3) they have been running fine UNTIL --

Saturday, we had a power failure. All the machines shutdown

of course. Upon reboot, all came back except one.

After futzing around with it for more than an hour, I discovered

it would start up, run for a couple of minutes, THEN - JUST - HANG. Hard.

No mouse clicks, no keyboard, nothing. If I got in quick enough, I could

get Task Manager up and running, but all it showed was nothing

at all was running. There was SOME movement in the system apps, but not much.

Power off and restart (MANY times!). Always the same result.

Run for a minute or two and could start stuff. Slowly the

hard drive stopped accessing and the machine ground to a halt.

However, it would come up and run fine in SAFE mode with networking....

I backed off the the last "good" restore point and bingo, up it came and ran OK.

For grins, I did a shutdown/restart. The problem reappeared.

Tried restart with last good system. Nada. Unplugged the Seagate backup drive. Nope.

I finally guessed (duh) it had to do with one of the STARTUP tasks.

In SAVE mode, I used CCLEANER to one by one disable the started tasks.

After 10 or so (and you can imagine the number of reboots back and forth

between SAFE mode and normal) I FINALLY accepted the fact that the last

software I had installed was Malwarebytes. I simply could not believe

that it was causing the problem, but.....

I disabled the Malwarebytes startup task and now the machine runs fine...

My temptation is to uninstall and reinstall Malwarebytes, BUT, I thought

(being a programmer myself) someone might want me to run a test or something

to try to identify this failure?? I know Malwarebytes is a quality product

(I've used it a couple of times in the past to clean machines for people)

so I don't know what's happening here. I'd like to help and save some other

poor sap the aggravation and time-consuming debugging I had to do to get this

machine back on the air. I'm sure it has something to do with an oil-water

mix with one of my other apps. I saw a reference in another post about Seagate.

I -am- running the Seagate backup software on this machine. That said, I'm

running it on one of the other ones too without apparent conflicts...

I will leave the machine as-is with the Malwarebytes startup task disabled

for about a week or until I hear from someone about what kind of debugging

material you might want me to generate/provide.

If I don't hear, I will go ahead with the uninstall/reinstall and keep my

fingers crossed.

By the way, the virus checker I'm running is AVG-pro...

Ron K.

[exile360]

Greetings

It sounds like one of Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware's config files or registry entries was likely corrupted while it was in memory when the PC was forced to shut down by the power outage. At this point, I actually would recommend reinstalling to see if that corrects it:

• Download and run mbam-clean.exe from here
  
• It will ask to restart your computer, please allow it to do so very important
  
• After the computer restarts, temporarily disable your Anti-Virus and install the latest version of Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware from here
  
  • Note: You will need to reactivate the program using the license you were sent via email if using the Pro version
    
  • Launch the program and set the Protection and Registration. Then go to the UPDATE tab if not done during installation and check for updates.
    Restart the computer again and verify that MBAM is in the task tray if using the Pro version. Now setup any file exclusions as may be required in your Anti-Virus/Internet-Security/Firewall applications and restart your Anti-Virus/Internet-Security applications. You may use the guides posted in the FAQ's here or ask and we'll explain how to do it.
    

Please let me know if it still has issues during boot after that or not.

Thanks

[ronk]

Followed your directions exactly and carefully.

MBAM successfully removed via program and reboot.

Exclusions set into AVG

AVG turned off

Reinstalled Malwarebytes from the program and ran update.

Didn't even need to reboot - problem reappeared in just a couple of minutes.

Went back into SAFE mode, used CCLEANER to stop Malwarebytes autostart.

Rebooted back to normal mode and all is working OK.

Clearly something is still wrong and in conflict...

Now what????

RonK

[exile360]

Create an Autoruns Log:

• Please download Sysinternals Autoruns from here and save it to your desktop.
  
  • Note: If using Windows Vista or Windows 7 then you also need to do the following:
    
    1. Right-click on Autoruns.exe and select Properties
       
    2. Click on the Compatibility tab
       
    3. Under Privilege Level check the box next to Run this program as an administrator
       
    4. Click on Apply then click OK
       

  [*]Double-click Autoruns.exe to run it.

  [*]Once it starts, please press the Esc key on your keyboard.

  [*]Now that scanning is stopped, click on the Options button at the top of the program and select Verify Code Signatures so that it is now checked

  [*]Click on the Options button again and this time uncheck Hide Windows Entries

  [*]Once that's done press the F5 key on your keyboard, this will start the scan again, this time let it finish.

  [*]When it's finished and says Ready. on the lower left of the program window, please click on the File button at the top of the program and select Save and save the Autoruns.arn file to your desktop and close Autoruns.

  [*]Right click on the Autoruns.arn file on your desktop and hover your mouse over Send To and select Compressed (zipped) Folder

  [*]Attach the Autoruns.zip folder you just created to your next reply

Thanks