After removal, your printer will still work via basic Windows drivers, but you will lose advanced features like ink monitoring and maintenance tools.

Because the Brother Status Monitor service or a scheduled task restarts it. To permanently prevent it, uninstall the Brother software or disable the service via services.msc (look for "Broher Maintainer Service").

| Check | Legitimate Indicator | Malware Indicator | |-------|----------------------|-------------------| | | Inside C:\Program Files\Brother\ | C:\Windows\ , C:\Users\[YourName]\AppData\Local\Temp\ , or a USB drive | | Digital Signature | Signed by "Brother Industries, Ltd." | Missing signature or signed by unknown publisher | | File Size | Typically 200 KB – 1.5 MB | Exceptionally small (under 50 KB) or very large (over 10 MB) | | Process Tree | Spawned by spoolsv.exe or Brother launcher | Spawned by suspicious processes like svchost.exe from wrong location |

A genuine brmainte.exe file is typically located in one of the following directories:

: If you don't want it running in the background, you can disable it via the Windows Task Manager under the Startup tab.