Malwarebytes Premium

About Malwarebytes Premium

Malwarebytes made its name as the second opinion scanner, the thing people install when the resident product says a machine is fine and the machine is visibly not fine. The detection approach leans on behaviour and on the families that adware and bundled installers actually belong to, which is why it pulls out browser hijackers, toolbars and potentially unwanted programs that signature-first products routinely walk straight past.

The scan itself is quick because it is targeted. A threat scan checks memory, startup entries, registry run keys, scheduled tasks and the locations that actually get used, rather than reading every byte on a drive. A custom scan covers a specific folder or a whole volume when there is reason to. Everything found lands in quarantine rather than being deleted outright, so a false positive on a legitimate tool is reversible.

The Premium build turns the product from a cleaner into a resident one. Web protection blocks known bad domains before a page loads, exploit protection hardens browsers and document readers against the memory tricks that drive-by pages use, ransomware protection watches for the behaviour pattern of mass file encryption, and the malware layer catches execution rather than waiting for a scheduled pass.

It is designed to sit alongside another product rather than fight it. Compatibility mode registers it as a secondary scanner so the built in protection stays active, which is the arrangement most people want. Scheduled scans, per drive exclusions, a report history and an offline definition update path round it out.

What is included in this build

• Threat scan targeting memory, startup entries, registry keys and scheduled tasks
• Detection of adware, browser hijackers and potentially unwanted programs other scanners ignore
• Real time malware, web, exploit and ransomware protection layers
• Quarantine rather than deletion, with per item restore
• Custom scans across a folder, a drive or the whole machine
• Compatibility mode for running beside an existing resident product
• Scheduled scanning with configurable intervals and quiet running
• Per file, per folder and per site exclusions with a report history

Changed in version 5.1.1.106

• Faster threat scans on machines with very large user profiles
• Improved detection of installer bundled adware families
• Ransomware layer rollback made more reliable on network drives
• Reduced idle resource use for the resident service
• Interface scaling corrected on high density displays

Installation walkthrough

These steps assume a clean machine. If a previous release of the same application is present, deal with that first, since an overlapping install is the most common cause of a setup that stops halfway.

1. Run the installer as administrator with any existing scanner temporarily paused.
2. Choose compatibility mode during setup if another resident product will stay installed.
3. Let the definition update finish before starting the first scan.
4. Run a full threat scan and review the quarantine list before applying anything permanently.
5. Set a scheduled scan interval and configure exclusions for development or build folders.

System requirements and file details

Frequently asked about this title