Hi. Probably this topic has been raised previously, but I've not been able to find a thread with quite the right content so here goes.
I bought an as-new Dell Optiplex 390 a week ago, running Windows 10 but with no McAfee, just Windows Defender. The PC has Edge on it as standard but not a lot else. I downloaded Chrome and that seemed to be okay with the OS (unlike with Windows 10 S); next, I added AdBlock to Chrome and that was fine too. But when I transferred my Malwarebytes Premium subscription from my old PC to the new one, things started to go wrong.
At first everything seemed okay, but then I found that if I left Chrome open and went away for maybe half an hour, when I returned I could neither open a new tab, open a new window or move on from the current webpage to a fresh one - by which I mean it was as if the web connection had been lost altogether, or rather the browser's ability to connect with the web had been lost. Opening a new window just resulted in an announcement that it wasn't possible to connect with whatever website I was trying to access. Closing Chrome down and then relaunching it made no difference: it was still impossible to access any web pages. If I closed Chrome and tried to launch Edge instead, nothing at all would happen. If I then tried relaunching Chrome, nothing would happen. If Edge suddenly launched, it would be with just a largely blank screen - and clicking the X at top right to close it back down resulted in it only closing down after a couple of minutes' wait.
If I then gave up and tried telling the PC to shut down, it took several minutes to shut down. On being restarted, it took a long time to boot up - and even when the desktop appeared, it was still another minute or more before clicking on a browser icon actually had any effect. Eventually, Chrome wouldn't launch at all under these circumstances.
Grudgingly, I deactivated my Malwarebytes Premium account to see what would happen, which left the PC with only Malwarebytes Free - and everything immediately started running healthily again, with Chrome springing briskly back into life. I deleted Malwarebytes completely from the PC, then received a message that Windows Defender was currently deactivated and that I needed to turn it back on again.
I'm unsure what to do about all this. I want Malwarebytes Premium on my PC, because I've run it for years on my old (Windows 7) PC and have always been happy with it. Does it make sense to try to deactivate or even delete Windows Defender altogether, to render a recurrence of the problems I've been experiencing impossible? Or would that take the firewall away too?
Alternatively, am I barking up the wrong tree in imagining that the issues are being caused by a clash of antivirus programs? After all, I read somewhere recently that Windows 10 had at some stage been tweaked to allow it to accept an alternative antivirus, though that might've been untrue. Whatever the case, I've no idea how to switch off or to delete whatever it may be that needs switching off or deleting to result in trouble-free browsing.
Your thoughts on this problem would be very welcome indeed. Thank you.
Edited by Waste of Space, 27 June 2020 - 01:21 PM.
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