June 2019

Malwarebytes users who upgraded machines to Windows 10 version 1903 may have noticed that Windows Defender got deactivated after the upgrade automatically.

Malwarebytes is a popular security solution for Windows that played nice with other installed security solutions up until that update. Many used it as a second line of defense next to Windows Defender or another resident antivirus solution.

The approach is different to that by other antivirus solutions; these disable other security software, like Windows Defender, when they are installed on the computer system.

We noticed back in October 2018 that Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system was not creating Registry backups anymore.

The scheduled task to create the backups was still running and the run result indicated that the operation completed successfully, but Registry backups were not created anymore.

Previous versions of Windows 10 created these backups and placed them in the C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack folder. The backups could be used to restore the Windows Registry to an earlier state.

Revo Uninstaller is a popular established program for Windows to uninstall programs and to deal with traces of uninstalled programs that default uninstallers often leave behind.

Revo Uninstaller invokes the default uninstaller of software programs first and scans the system afterwards for traces. Traces are separated further into leftover files, e.g. in the program directory or temporary files, and data in the Windows Registry.

The program is available as a free limited version and a commercial version called Revo Uninstaller Pro.

ScanFS is a powerful file search software with in-content search and regular expression support for Windows that is free to use for Home use. The application is compatible with all recent versions of the Windows operating system and needs to be installed before it can be used.

The Windows operating system comes with file search capabilities but functionality is bare bones and performance not good at all.

Third-party file search applications like WizFile, Everything, or ScanFS improve the process significantly for the user.