The causes of anti-malware failure range from minor system errors to raging, full-blown infections. Here’s how to safely sort things out.
Plus: Security concerns about bypassing Windows’ UAC, a reliable DVD drive suddenly dies, and a free DOS-emulator helps you run very old apps and games.
Anti-malware tool vanishes, can’t be reinstalled
Reader Bill experienced problems with multiple anti-malware tools.
- “Fred, I have a problem that is starting to scare me, and I thought you might give me some common-sense advice.
“I keep my Win7 Pro system fully backed up and updated. Sometime within the past month or so, my installation of Microsoft Security Essentials [MSE] disappeared. I downloaded a new copy of MSE and attempted to install it, but received a useless error message each time.
“I then downloaded and tried AVG, Ad-Aware, Kaspersky, Avira, and several others. Not one of them would install, and they all gave different error messages.
“I resorted to using on-line AV scans, but doing that on a daily basis is ultimately a losing effort. I have Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Premium installed, and it works fine.
“None of the suggestions in Microsoft forums has worked, though I’ve found only a few posts describing problems similar to mine.”
