Author Topic: Windows Security Essentials (Read 147,674 times)

JavaJones · « **Reply #100 on:** November 08, 2009, 09:55 PM »

Cool, thanks for the info. Looking forward to Avast 5! Is there any news on when it might be released publicly?

- Oshyan

grandpastan · « **Reply #101 on:** November 08, 2009, 10:07 PM »

I tried it out a couple weeks ago. It really screwed up my comp. Maybe because I have a LOT of progs installed. Maybe coincidence. I don't know. All I know is I had to uninstall it and am still trying to straighten things out. I am running XP SP3

Bamse · « **Reply #102 on:** November 08, 2009, 10:23 PM »

I think I have seen mid-November as a goal, pretty sure october was first date missed. Check current situation at their beta forum http://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=15.0 I bet mid/late December. Remember it is brand new program so quite a few minor bugs. And behavior blocker not enabled yet. Main functionality seem stable. Some risk when testing of course but try it out if in the mood. You can install/uninstall MSE without reboot, think it also goes for Avast. Or search Youtube for "Avast 5" if curious about new look.

Will be interesting to see what Avast meant when they said version 5 was "compatible" with MSE

As a min. it must mean both can be installed (regardless of what MSE advice) - but only one resident towards filesystem. Why declare compatibility if program is not used? Perhaps finally some real use of all those modules and options in Avast. If MSE is resident then Network/webshield shield could work. I believe they have started with IP blocking now, always nice to have. Just Avasts bootscan will be nice addition to MSE. Will soon work on 64 bit, still some 32bit leftovers. There will be much testing going on once it is officially released.

grandpastan, I hope you mean Avast 5 and not MSE. Check beta-forum for possible solution to whatever problem is/was, can't remember any evil alpha bugs with this but who knows.

IainB · « **Reply #103 on:** November 19, 2009, 10:41 PM »

Re: Updates to Microsoft Security Essentials virus profiles
If you are running this anti-virus proggy, then you will probably have seen in the "Update" tab of its control window that it says:

Quote

"Microsoft Security Essentials updates your virus & spyware definitions automatically to help protect your computer"

I read a Lifehacker post yesterday about how someone had written a proggy to force MSE to update its virus profiles on a regular basis. That would seem to be a redundant app. They apparently thought that MSE only updated with MS Update, and that if you had not got MS Update on auto, then your virus profiles would not get updated. That looks like a wrong assumption, as MSE seems to persistently attempt auto-update (if connected to the internet) if its virus profiles are >24 hours old. If it has not been able to connect to the internet and update, then after >24 hrs elapsed, it's systray icon goes a reddish-brown colour (normally, it is green) and if you open the control window there is more of the reddish-brown colour and it says its virus profiles need updating, so you can reconnect to the internet and then press the "Update" button to force an immediate update.

Feedback so far: I have only good things to say about MS with their MSE. I have had it running for a while now, and it is fuss-free and has cleaned out 5 bits of malware that Avast! had not found (as reported above). The only fault I could find in it is that it occasionally overloads the CPU, but then it does not seem to insist on taking foreground priority in the queue so, though the CPU might briefly overheat, there are no appreciable delays in the foreground response time.

IainB · « **Reply #104 on:** November 19, 2009, 11:08 PM »

Quote

A Peek at MSRT November Threat Reports - here.
By continuing to include new variants of the existing threat families, the MSRT has removed malware from more than 1.5 million machines three days after its release on 10 November. This month we’ve also added Win32/FakeVimes and Win32/PrivacyCenter to the MSRT detection and have removed these new rogues from more than 110,000 machines.

I just emailed the feedback bit (above post) to MS at their MSE website. They probably don't need the feedback. Whilst I was there I saw the above (quoted). Read the rest of it at the link - it makes for pretty interesting reading. There's also on that site a link to Windows 7 consumer security software providers

That lists all the well-know anti-virus apps, including Avast!, AVG, etc.

wraith808 · « **Reply #105 on:** September 28, 2010, 10:57 AM »

I started using it- I had been using AVG for years, and didn't really want to spend the funds to re-up for another year. I don't move around as much for work, so I don't really need the internet related stuff (firewall, etc) as I have a hardware firewall, so wanted to give it a try. It scans really fast on quick scan, my computer is now responding better than it has in a while, and WSE actually found something on my computer that AVG had never caught before.

So far, I give it a

Bamse · « **Reply #106 on:** September 28, 2010, 01:28 PM »

Beta of 2.0 is way better I think. Now you can tinker with real time protection, more than just on/off. More important MSE now also have some caching logic to it = less hysteric than 1.x. Still strangely high cpu usage when scanning new stuff but may be because cache is updated. Acceptable loss of productivity and should work on laptops now

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/22640/screenshot-tour-microsoft-security-essentials-2.0-beta/

IainB · « **Reply #107 on:** September 29, 2010, 11:41 AM »

+1 for what @Bamse said.

Darwin · « **Reply #108 on:** September 29, 2010, 01:51 PM »

Heh, heh - I just checked my license for VIPRE and its good until 2012! So for now I'm "sticking" on my own machine (hopefully the resource utilization will be tamed in the meantime - I'm already seeing some improvement, but how much is due to my tweaking and how much to Sunbelt's development is hard to say at this point), but I'll be watching MSE closely as I have it installed on four other machines in the house. I've been reading about beta 2 over the past week or so and it does look impressive.

Stoic Joker · « **Reply #109 on:** September 29, 2010, 02:39 PM »

Side note on Sunbelt/VIPRE ... You do know it got sold to GFi a month or so back, right?

http://www.gfi.com/page/55854/gfi-software-enhances-its-security-product-offering-with-the-acquisition-of-sunbelt-software

Darwin · « **Reply #110 on:** September 29, 2010, 04:31 PM »

Yeah... I got that memo from them. I'm hoping that they continue to support and actively develop VIPRE and their other security products and DON'T let it rest on its laurels (I'm thinking about the fate of Norton products when Symantec took them over, though from what I've read/seen they've been steadily improving for the last few years).

lanux128 · « **Reply #111 on:** September 30, 2010, 02:41 AM »

Quote from: Darwin on September 29, 2010, 04:31 PM

(I'm thinking about the fate of Norton products when Symantec took them over, though from what I've read/seen they've been steadily improving for the last few years).

i'm not a big fan of Symantec but lately i've been using machines with Enterprise Edition and find them a bit more appeasing to the system's resource.

Darwin · « **Reply #112 on:** September 30, 2010, 04:10 AM »

Quote from: lanux128 on September 30, 2010, 02:41 AM

Quote from: Darwin on September 29, 2010, 04:31 PM
(I'm thinking about the fate of Norton products when Symantec took them over, though from what I've read/seen they've been steadily improving for the last few years).

i'm not a big fan of Symantec but lately i've been using machines with Enterprise Edition and find them a bit more appeasing to the system's resource.

Heh, heh - good to hear! It will take an awful lot for me to forget the bloat and resource hogging circa 2005 or so, though... I have high hopes for MSE - hopefully they'll keep it lean, mean, and free... MOST importantly LEAN.

Darwin · « **Reply #113 on:** October 03, 2010, 12:50 PM »

As noted in the Kaspersky thread, my CPU/resource issues with Sunbelt VIPRE have been solved and I have been able to re-enable Active Protection's "scan files and folders as they are opened" feature. Apparently, the issue originated on some machines with a recent defintiions update that has since been corrected.

J-Mac · « **Reply #114 on:** November 25, 2010, 07:09 PM »

This thread isn't that old so I hope no one minds me resurrecting it now.

A couple of my Eset NOD32 AV licenses are coming due shortly (though I also have a few more that have anywhere from 3-4 months to more than a year left on them) and I am looking real hard at Microsoft Security Essentials. Eset has done well for me over the last five or six years but it ain't cheap! Don’t get me wrong: it does a great job and that certainly is more important than cost IMO. Yet if others are doing just as well at considerably lower cost then it would be wise for me to at least take a good hard look at them. Plus Eset is still in the dark ages in a lot of commercial aspects. E.g., though I have five active licenses with Eset - all for NOD32 AV - I still am required to monitor the expiration dates and renew the licenses for all of them separately. I ask every year if they have altered their policies and allow customers to consolidate their licenses so that I would only need to keep an eye on one license expiration/renewal date, but no such nicety appears to even be in their sights. So I must keep monitoring the five expirations and renewals individually. Oh, and they don’t notify you when expiration is approaching. I had a long conversation with Eset support the first time that happened a few years ago and was told that it is up to the user to remember the expiration dates. The tech agreed that this wasn't an optimum situation but he had no control over such things of course. Now they have the tray icon turn yellow when you are within a couple days of expiration, but it only stays yellow for that one session; reboot and it is green again. Plus they simply will not combine licenses and allow multiple licenses to be handled in one account - unless you purchase them that way up front. Of course I added individual licenses as needed so they weren't purchased together.

Anyway, enough on Eset. I would love to use MSE but only if it is truly worthwhile. I have read many reviews and it appears that Microsoft has made MSE into a worthy security program. Earlier reviews though cautioned that users do not have a lot of detailed control over the settings, and that would be a very big potential deal killer for me. I have Eset never clean any file on my computer until after I have reviewed it - they have too significant a history of false positives for me to ever allow NOD32 to delete files as it sees fit. But I read earlier that MSE was similar in that respect. Has this changed with later releases? Is anyone here who is using MSE knowledgeable regarding the "configurability" of MSE's settings? Also, I don’t have Eset scan on a schedule currently; instead I perform a full scan every three months and start it only when I know I can leave the computer alone for at least two days. Yes, two whole days to scan my rig here! Since I have the box actively scanned 24/7, I don’t feel the need to run full scans very often. Does MSE allow me to NOT schedule scans and instead scan manually periodically? Any other major issues I need to know before switching?

Thanks for any info!

Jim

cyberdiva · « **Reply #115 on:** November 26, 2010, 03:20 AM »

Quote from: J-Mac on November 25, 2010, 07:09 PM

Does MSE allow me to NOT schedule scans and instead scan manually periodically?

I've got MSE on my Win7 Toshiba netbook, and I've been pleased with it. Since I rarely have any malware on my computer, I can't say much about MSE's ability to detect bad stuff. However, I can tell you that MSE does allow you to not schedule scans and instead manually scan when you want to. That's what I do on the netbook.

J-Mac · « **Reply #116 on:** November 26, 2010, 04:03 AM »

Thank you! That is important to me as I have three internal drives - 1-80GB and 2-500 GB - plus two external drives - 1-1TB and 1-340GB - so a full scan is literally days! However since I started clean and have had NOD32 actively scanning ever since the box is clean.

Well, what I probably will do is replace NOD32 with Microsoft Security Essentials on one machine and see how it works out. If it does well then I will load it on the others as the Eset licenses expire. Five licenses gets kinda pricey!

Thanks!

Jim

steeladept · « **Reply #117 on:** November 26, 2010, 04:36 AM »

I went through the same issues early this past summer. I ended up going back to Eset mostly because I use the entire security suite and I don't trust the windows firewall (I know I could get my own elsewhere for free, but it is much easier this way). If I were going JUST the AV, I would have probably went with MSE. It was mostly the firewall and other suite features that swayed me back to buy another year of Eset's service. Of course I am on WinXP still. If I were on Win7 or even Vista things might have been different....

J-Mac · « **Reply #118 on:** November 26, 2010, 05:40 AM »

Thanks Steel. Yes, just the AV for me. I don’t have any problem using the Windows Firewall, plus I am behind a router with SPI so I'm OK there. I really have to at least give it a try, but I did want to see if any actual users of MSE here had any hard issues with it. Sounds like it might work out for me.

Thanks again!

Jim

Armando · « **Reply #119 on:** November 26, 2010, 05:59 AM »

When my NOD32 license finished, I didn't renew it and went for MSE. It found 1 "threat" NOD never found...

That said, I didn't really inquire to find out if the catch was relevant or not...

It's a bit slower than NOD32 when scanning, and the CPU goes wild once in a rare while (when syncing my Outlook calendar with Google). All in all, I find that it works well and I'm very very satisfied. No system instability and weird stuff.

(As for the firewall, I'm now using Comodo -- was with Online Armour and had to drop it only a few weeks or a couple months after renewing my license : was experiencing freezes etc. All that went away with Comodo. When I'm working in a Café with my laptop, I feel more secure using a good firewall...)

f0dder · « **Reply #120 on:** November 26, 2010, 07:56 AM »

Quote from: steeladept on November 26, 2010, 04:36 AM

It was mostly the firewall and other suite features that swayed me back to buy another year of Eset's service. Of course I am on WinXP still. If I were on Win7 or even Vista things might have been different....

XP firewall is just fine - you only need to block incoming threats, which it does perfectly well. No need to use anything else, really.

Bamse · « **Reply #121 on:** November 26, 2010, 08:51 AM »

You might need to know about ESET uninstaller http://kb.eset.com/esetkb/index?page=content&id=SOLN2289

But do evaluate beta of MSE 2 http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/11/10/microsoft-security-essentials-2-beta-update-brings-more-improvements/ They have added more features but main difference is it seems to work much faster. If you or your task manager have any sense of cpu usage there is a risk your test of MSE 1 will be over in a flash. Many say MSE is the lightest and best ever, check almost any forum or even google, but I think that tells more about the crap some people used before than about MSE. MSE 2 is also not a rocket but more in sync with std. of current AVs.

If you are hysteric with scan times be sure you know settings, like dif. between all files and relevant files. I don't remember defaults but MSE is probably set up to scan everything, all files, all archives = long scan time. Now it has some sort of caching feature so it should not matter that much, except for initial scan. That is the theory but when I say beta is noticeable faster I mainly think of real time modules or what matters. Use exception options if speed is unacceptable, not much point in scanning 1TB of movies more than once for example.

Think it will be released early 2011. Microsoft has a forum for MSE but you wont see official reps. or new insights into anything, just MSVPs stumbling over each over to make answers "marked" as correct, heh. Worst forum feature! http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en/category/mse since you want to check things out before installing I guess you should say hello. General attitude is you use Microsoft products after the book. You do not need and should not use evil 3rd party programs

If you have other security programs you like to use with MSE check info from them, not MS.

Defaults are still adjusted to grandma so most is automated. Version 2 is also better with fine tuning of what is scanned and how.

Armando · « **Reply #122 on:** November 26, 2010, 04:24 PM »

I'm using the beta too. Sorry for not mentioning.

J-Mac · « **Reply #123 on:** November 26, 2010, 06:08 PM »

Thanks all for your comments. All are very helpful.

I'll give the beta a try on one box and see how it goes.

Jim

Darwin · « **Reply #124 on:** November 26, 2010, 07:45 PM »

I'm SERIOUSLY tempted to try the beta of MSE 2 on my main notebook. The resource hogging issue has returned and I really don't care about the firewall (though the one the comes with VIPRE is good)... sad fact is that I'm the result of the union of two lineages: one Yorkshire/Darbyshire and the other Scottish/Northumberland and I keep thinking about the 15 months left on my household license for VIPRE