Malicious Software Removal Tool in Win10 Home won't run

Richard, RikData,

Thinking ahead... perhaps deleting that Mrtstub.exe file is worth exploring.  Can you elaborate Richard, on how that task might be done?

Wayne

Richard,

Ran the full MRT scan, 0 files infected, never wavered from "0".  Just an FYI.

Wayne

RikData, Richard,

Couldn't for the life of me, find any file or folder labeled Mrtstub.exe anywhere!  Maybe this was a temporary file and deleted?  This pathway to a solution seems unlikely.....correct me if I'm wrong.

If disk cleanup, safe mode, sfc /scannow and DISM do not resolve the problem, then restoring to an earlier point in time in Recovery, or performing a within Windows repair with ISO installation media would be the next steps.

Wayne

Thanks Wayne, very interesting. The scan on my system consisted of a little over 2.1TB on 2 drives, I didn't catch it until the 8 was displayed and I'm not sure but I think that that was toward about the 3/4 point of drive C:, the other 2 were a short time after the scan had gone to the storage drive (the larger amount of data by far of the two). I was then away from it again until after it had finished and then took the snapshot of the end result shown. This was my first time running it manually, Full detailed results of the scan also showed that no infections that were checked for were found. (I had expected such as I keep my system clean and it is and has been very fast and trouble free since I installed and started using Win 10 Pro back in Feb. 2016 on my Dell Precision T3500 workstation).

Again, very interesting. Being that I have not had any problems with performance I was wondering if an occasional fragment of an app, program, or diver etc. was questionable (marked as a flag) during the scan to be then checked against the totality of the completed scan thereby seeing a relative connection to a nonthreatening application as a whole was a possibility?

But alas, my experience so far has been great with Windows 10 Pro, I see no need to investigate this further however any thoughts on this will be welcome.

-Richard

My thoughts on this is that the original and/or the second (apparently updated from the 1st one issued for May for some reason, it is unusual to have two in the same month especially so close together) from auto update would have automatically run a quick scan, presumably no notification was given of a problem found or error reported and that this therefore is not something to fret about at this time at least. Since the next months newer version of the MRT always carries the same KB number and a new one is due any day now just check the Settings update history and when you see that it has been downloaded, say the day before so as not to attempt to manually run it while it may be silently running in the background as per default, and then see if the issue with the manual initiation of the scan persists.

If one is worried that there may be a hidden infection on their device the Microsoft Safety Scanner is linked to on the MRT page that I linked in my first reply to this thread.

Remember and or be aware that the MRT is not a substitution for anti-virus real-time protection, it is a once a month (generally) downloaded and silently run in the background second layer specifically designed to remove any malicious files and/or software, with the most recent definitions available at the time of it's release, that may have been so new that they may have slipped through the real time AV solution that is being used on the device.

IMHO, Windows 10 Defender is a top notch world class AV application as well as being the least intrusive and resource hungry when integrated with the Win 10 OS. This is what I use and I then also have MBAM free installed and use it as a stand alone secondary scan about once a month in case something may have slipped through the Win 10 Defender and nothing has yet (I am careful not to invite or allow the installation of PUP's on my device).

Any further thoughts on this topic are invited.

-Richard