MS Security Essentials

[Ben]

Any of you running MS Security Essentials, specifically on Win7? If so, what do you think of it?

[Perd Hapley]

I used it on the release candidate for a few months, and am also using it on the new install (7 Pro 64) I did last night.  I like it, mainly because I never know it's there. 

I started using it mainly because of a whimsical decision I made back then, to try keeping that install as Microsofty as possible.  I gave up on that, because I couldn't stand using IE any longer.

MSS doesn't look too bad on this comparison test:
http://www.pcworld.com/product/testreport/compare?chart_id=6403&orig_url=%2Farticle%2Fid%2C170674-page%2C1%2Farticle.html&chart_title=Free+Antivirus+Software&chart_date=Mon+Aug+24+17%3A30%3A00+PDT+2009&prodid=290836&prodid=290835&prodid=290840&prodid=290838&prodid=290834&prodid=290845

It tied for third, with AVG. 


I was tempted to try NOD, but their free download is just a trial version, so...

[Ben]

I used it on the release candidate for a few months, and am also using it on the new install (7 Pro 64) I did last night.  I like it, mainly because I never know it's there. 

I just installed it a few hours ago, and this is what I'm liking about it as well. It's (so far) not being any kind of resource hog or slowing anything down, which is kind of unusual for an MS product.   

I'm just curious on its detection ability.

[Battle Monkey of Zardoz]

It seems like a good program. My only beef is it appears that you cannot opt out of sending information to MS to aid them with feedback.

[Ben]

It seems like a good program. My only beef is it appears that you cannot opt out of sending information to MS to aid them with feedback.

Hmm. I didn't notice that. I don't think I even saw a screen with the option to check or uncheck. Call me unhelpful, but I disable the feedback option on all software that gives me an option. I want outside entities talking to my computer as little as possible.

[Perd Hapley]

Wow, three whole people using it! 

[Battle Monkey of Zardoz]

 Uninstall it. Then reinstall. You will get a choice of sending all program related feedback or just basic feedback. I don't use it because of that. Don't like MS speaking to my computer either. I use Kaspersky 2010 security suite, no complaints.

[Perd Hapley]

Like I said, I've been using MSE for a while now, and I like it.  This is on older systems.  But it has been running very slowly on my newest, patched-together PC, so I went back to Avira.  This machine has a 3 GHz P4 HT, 4 GB RAM and two 80 GB SATA HDDs, and runs Win 7 Pro x64.  MSE took several hours for a full scan, and heated up my processor to levels I did not like.  Avira can scan the system in under an hour, and without heating things up.   It also seems faster on boot-up. 

[Ben]

Thread  Necromancer,

That's interesting that it's bogging down your new system. It runs like lightning on my i7 and even on the Atom processor on my Nettop (both run Win7), way less intrusive on startup than AVG or Avira. I just installed it on an old AMD system (WinXP) though, and that one bogs down like crazy on startup, with MSE taking 99% of the processor for like 5 minutes. I'm actually going to go back to AVG on that one.

[lee n. field]

Any of you running MS Security Essentials, specifically on Win7? If so, what do you think of it?

Seems to be OK. 

I was tempted to try NOD, but their free download is just a trial version, so...

NOD impressed me, a few weeks back.  A new customer described his problem, which sounded like you typical popup fraudware "antivirus".  I got there to deal with it, and found that whatever version of NOD he had, had actually dealt with it.  Usually, by the time this kind of nasty is actually working, it has to be dealt with manually.

[Perd Hapley]

That's interesting that it's bogging down your new system. It runs like lightning on my i7 and even on the Atom processor on my Nettop (both run Win7), way less intrusive on startup than AVG or Avira. I just installed it on an old AMD system (WinXP) though, and that one bogs down like crazy on startup, with MSE taking 99% of the processor for like 5 minutes. I'm actually going to go back to AVG on that one.

Well, my "new system" is about three years old, and single core.     Also, the motherboard won't let me use the full 4 GB of RAM.   

A big difference between this system and the others I'm using, is that it has about 85 GB of files, spread over three logical drives and two physical drives, whereas, the other machines probably have less than twenty GB of files, and just one or two logical drives.  I wonder how much difference that makes.

[Perd Hapley]

NOD impressed me, a few weeks back. 

NOD seems to impress a lot of people.  If I ever start paying for anti-virus...

[zxcvbob]

I'm using MSE on Win7 (Atom 280 processor), Vista (old hardware with AMD processor), and several XP machines.  No complaints. 

[tyme]

MSE is probably the easiest and most painless free real-time antivirus.  For periodic scanning I mostly just use malwarebytes unless I suspect a problem.  NOD32 is my favorite non-free antivirus.