The latest June Patch Tuesday update for Windows 11 broke Chrome for users running Malwarebytes. Malwarebytes has acknowledged the issue and released an update to its Product to make Chrome launch again.
Malwarebytes conflicts with Chrome on Windows 11
Microsoft has released Cumulative Update KB5027231 for Windows 11 with security fixes. The update has triggered a conflict between Malwarebytes Exploit protection and Chrome, causing the latter to crash.
When reported by users, Malwarebytes acknowledged the problem and suggested users disable Chrome as a protected Application in Malwarebytes to circumvent it.
The steps require doing the following.
- Open Malwarebytes
- Visit Settings > Security
- Under Exploit Protection, click on Manage Protected Applications
- Toggle off Google Chrome (and plug-ins)
- Click Done.
Now launch Chrome, it will open without any issues.
While the above workaround applying requires manual intervention. To avoid this, Malwarebytes released an update.
Note: The KB5027231 update that prevented Chrome from working is a security update, hence it is not recommended to uninstall it.
Fix
Malwarebytes has already pushed a fix to its Product. The fix doesn’t apply the Anti-Exploit protection code to Chrome processes as that caused Chrome to crash.
To receive the fix,
Update Malwarebytes:
- Open Malwarebytes,
- Click Settings > About> Check for updates.
- After that, Navigate to the About tab, to check Malwarebytes version as 4.5.31.270 and its component update version as 1.0.2047
If you’ve disabled Anti-exploit protection for Chrome, re-enable it by reversing the steps given above.
What’s your take on this? Are you affected? Let us know in the comments below.
Final words: KB5027231 Update released on June 13, 2023, caused conflict between Chrome and Malwarebytes exploit protection and made the browser unopenable. Malwarebytes released an update to make Chrome open again.