Malwarebytes has been one of my favorite tools for years. It does a great job at removing junk and unwanted programs that Anti-virus vendors either ignore or can’t detect. When cleaning machines in our shop, we use the Free version which does not offer real-time protection. The Premium version offers a number of benefits not available in the Free version. A comparison of the two versions can be found here.
Recently, Malwarebytes has launched a new version. If you’re running an older version and check for updates, you’ll get the message below indicating that it will be installing the new version.
At the end of the installation, you will get the dialog box below.
If you only want the Free version, make sure you uncheck the box “Enable free trial of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Premium”.
And click Finish.
If you don’t uncheck the box, you will be running a 14-day trial of the Premium version. At the end of the trial version, you will want to either purchase it or uninstall it. Unlike previous versions of the Malwarebytes trial, there is currently no way to convert it back to the Free version after the Premium trial expires.
If you forgot to uncheck the box, a simple uninstall/re-install is not enough to get you back to having the Free version. You’ll need to run the Malwarebytes Clean Uninstall Tool first, then you can re-install by downloading the Free version here. Of course, if you only want the Free version, make sure you don’t forget to uncheck the box “enable free trial version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Premium” during the re-install.
