
And as other commenters have remarked, McAfee and most of the other big names in AV software are just poor. It's been about 8 months since I have been using the MB/WD active protection combo and I have had zero issues.

Malwarebytes was actually first recommended to me by a buddy that worked for Microsoft way back in the day. And definitely install their browser addon, it is excellent. MBs also has a lot of unique features, at least the premium addition does, that I think set it apart from other programs. I rarely have issues with viruses but I have seen Windows Defender catch things that MBs missed and MBs has several times catch things Defender missed. This allows you to have both running active protection at once, and I have not had a single conflict, in fact they seem to compliment each other pretty well. You open up MBs and go into settings, and you turn off the option to have MBs register with Windows. There is a slight bit on configuration required, but it is pretty simple. Both with their active protections turned on, they do not impede or conflict with one another. However, recently Microsoft has stepped up their game with Windows's built in AV defender app, and, it works excellent in conjunction with MBP.

I was not able to find another 3rd party AV that could give me what I was looking for along with MBs. However, this changed a year or two ago and they now conflict, and can crash Windows. There were actually instructions in the MB forum on how to configure this so that they would work in harmony. I could get into why, but it would be pretty technical and lead of a very long comment.įor the longest I was successfully using both Avast and MBP together, both with active protection turned on, because Avast was one of the few AV programs that could be customized to work with MBs. I starting supporting MBs when they were still a startup company and they have done pretty well to keep my computer safe, although I have never relied on them completely alone. Hey OP, I know I am well late and you have made your decisions by now, but I just wanted to share a little bit, as evolving cyber security is going to be a constant for everyone.
