A reader asks: “What’s up with Malwarebytes?”

Reader Sheldon Doskie asks: “Hi Fred, Great to see you back! Are you aware of a problem when trying to update the latest virus signatures of the Malwarebytes free version? I keep getting ‘unable to access update server,’ then after a minute or so, the current date followed by a 2-digit number is displayed as the Database Version. I’m running Windows 7. Thanx for your help, Sheldon

Hmmm. Whatever problem you’re having doesn’t appear to be widespread: There’s no obvious spike in problem reports in places such as the Malwarebytes and the AskWoody forums.

But in the not-too-distant past (Fall 2018), there were some serious connectivity conflicts between Malwarebytes and Avast. (See Avast Users Having Internet Issues & Malwarebytes Conflicts After Upgrade.) Perhaps some similar conflict is at the root of your current problem.

You also said you’re using the free version; the trouble could be as simple as the free version timing out at the end of its two-week trial.

Either way, this general-purpose, clean-start might help: Completely uninstall Malwarebytes, reboot, run a reputable Registry cleaner, reboot again, reinstall Malwarebytes, see what happens.

But if the problem isn’t something that simple to resolve, you might want to rethink using Malwarebytes altogether: Independent third-party tests show that Malwarebytes Pro is among the worst-performing of the major third-party anti-malware suites, ranking a lowly 12th in a crowded field behind AhnLab, Avast, AVG, Avira, Bitdefender, and others.

So, if a full-on, from-scratch reinstall of Malwarebytes doesn’t fix your problem, you might consider ditching it. Why struggle to fix something when much better options are available?

That’s especially true with Win7 — a version of Windows that’s in its final months. (Win7 support ends in Jan 2020.) When you move to Win10, you’ll automatically get the free, built-in Win10 version of Windows Defender, which those same independent tests (mentioned above) usually rank about the same as Malwarebytes Pro — and so is almost certainly better than Malwarebytes free!

So, a Malwarebytes problem might be worth a quick fix. But if I were you, Sheldon, I wouldn’t invest a lot of effort in it from here on out.

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