Running antimalware in safe mode

Is it always best to run any anti-malware program in safe mode? I cleaned up a couple of friends computers using MBAM and Avira in normal windows mode and it seemed to work.

One computer was slowed to a crawl and had nearly 600 antimalware detections which free up the computer after removal and 300 or so detections with Avira.

 

Your friend was experienced what my friend did.
The laptop itself already corrupted by all kinds of malwares/spywares/viruses.
Almost all .exe files became living host for viruses. So, AVs will destroy them(since the files become viruses already).
As they are important .exe files(running of windows and applications) and were destroyed by AVs, the computer system would destroy as well.
There is no cure for this situation. A format is required to fix this.

 

Although there was tons of detections on both computers, thankfully MBAM, SAS and Avira appeared to clean the machines without a need to reinstall Windows. As far as I could tell when I left both machines were running fine.

 

I have 3 machines running well with Avira Antivir Personal 9.
SAS and MBAM are not primary needs. If you have Avira Antivir Personal 9, SAS and MBAM are not needed unless you face some insane strange hardcore spywares that Avira Antivir Personal 9 couldn't handle. MBAM and SAS would help you solve this!
Basically, Avira Antivir Personal 9 is powered up by "auto-detect WHATEVER spywares". So, I think it should be fine without running MBAM and SAS.

 

I'd say it depends. If you actually can boot into normal mode then often it's not necessary.
I've grown accustomed to running anti-malware in safe mode from the XP days.
Having only the bare minimum (of XP) loaded, prevents a lot of malware from running in the background.
For the newest programs like MBAM, it's actually recommended to use a quick scan in normal mode.
But if someone posts a question about a malware problem without further specifying whether he can actually boot into normal mode or not, I'll recommend running MBAM in safe mode, just to be on the safe side.
It can take a lot longer though to run the scan, especially a full scan.

(600 detections warrants a clean install imao, a 10 minutes Acronis image is even faster than your average quick scan but then again, such an image has to be available).
Cheers.

 

Yeah most likely but these were both used computers. I doubt either had install CD's and neither has ATI or the knowledge to use it. As I'm just visiting and don't have the time to check back, hopefully, what I did will work out for them.