Malwarebytes seemed to have detected TotalAV as a threat

[Alex Adamson]

So recently I got worries that I had installed a trojan onto my PC and I've been running Windows security and Malwarebytes over and over again. They discovered no threats for a long period of time, until I installed the free version of TotalAV and ran a system check on it, just to be sure. Then suddenly Windows Security discovered, what it described as a major threat, and Malwarebytes discovered almost 500 threats when I did a quick scan. I panicked and told Malwarebytes to delete all the malicious files before looking at them which it needed to restart to do, and when my PC started up again TotalAV had been uninstalled. I did another quick scan with Malwarebytes and saw 6 malicious files and they were all from TotalAV within what remained of the files. I have since deleted all the files and Malwarebytes is saying everything's good.

What on earth was this about? Do multiple antivirus softwares not work well with eachother? Did I install a fake TotalAV? I installed from this link: https://www.totalav.com/en/free-antivirus

 

[Alex Adamson]

I think you will find that TotalAv is fake period.........

Thank you, I should've looked it up first.

Never heard of TotalAV and I regularly check which free AV is the best.

Get rid and install something else.

I found TotalAV here: https://www.antivirussoftwareguide.com/free-antivirus-software It was the first result that came up when googling: Best antivirus.
Do you think Malwarebytes is good?

 

[Alex Adamson]

Ah OK, never heard of the the top two, and I wouldn't trust a source that recommends Norton or McAfee personally. I tend to skip any Google results which say "ad" next to them.

Yes Malwarebytes is fine.

As for free AV, I'd use Panda, Avira, Avast, Kaspersky Free, Sophos Free, AVG, etc. Take your pick.

I personally use Sophos free because I can easily monitor several machines from the console.

Thank you for your help. I apologise for my ignorance in the matter, but is Malwarebytes not a free antivirus software? I was under the impression it was. May I also ask why you don't trust Norton or McAfee?

 

[Alex Adamson]

Maybe it has changed now, but Malwarebytes never used to have real time protection, it was always just a tool to scan and remove things.

If it has real time protection then use that by all means

It's not that I don't trust Norton and McAfee, it's that they usually aren't as good as free alternatives, and you have to pay for them.

Edit: it seems only the paid version of Malwarebytes is a fully fledged antivirus.

Thank you once again.