Once or twice a month, Brave apparently uninstalls itself

[KhajitStevens]

Every so often when I turn on my machine and either click the Brave shortcut on my taskbar, or Windows key + “Brave”, I get an error message that the program no longer exists in that location. I then have to download and reinstall it again using filthy Edge. This happens maybe once or twice a month.

Just recently had a first: Brave was actually already open in the background to look stuff up while playing a game, and when I tried to Alt+Tab over, it was gone! Tried to start it up again, and got the error message that the program is no longer in that location! Every time I reinstall, all my previous tabs are there, for what it’s worth.

This has been going on for years. I’m never torrenting with it, weird downloads, using Tor, or doing anything unusual at all to cause this, just standard browsing, cannot nail down a catalyst or variable for the life of me.

This has been going on for years. Windows 10, always on the most recent public Brave release downloaded from brave.com. It is extremely frustrating, and I have searched high and low for an explanation. Why is this happening?

[Saoiray]

@KhajitStevens this is a very weird behavior and likely would be due to some program you have on your device. Have you taken a deep look at things like any antivirus, firewall, or internet security programs you have? I’m wanting to assume you definitely have something going.

And along with that first question, guess also might ask if you’ve recently done any malware or virus scans just to be safe?

[KhajitStevens]

Thanks for the reply. This has survived multiple System Restores, and the only active firewall I have is Windows Defender. Which has only ever quarantined iffy files as soon as they are downloaded, never retroactively. Like I said, there seems to be no catalyst I can pin down. Standard browsing, then suddenly when I boot up, it’s just gone.

Up-to-date Malwarebytes comes up clean. Don’t use any extensions or anything like that.