Microsoft Security Essentials

[johnshaw1917]

Hey all, does anybody out there use MSE and what's your take on it? I'm trying it out on Win 7 and it seems to work well. No noticeable drag on my system resources, but I was wondering how good it is at detecting threats. Thanks, John

[Murphy]

Hi ,

''Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0.1961.0 user reviews''

''MS Security Essentials test shows 98% detection rate for 545k malware samples''

Best regards !

[ginzon]

Detection as good as a paid AV say Kaspersky, Avast and may be even Avira....

I used it so I know i get latest viruses almost everyday from my college and it was able to stop those...

[leofelix]

When I installed MSE (first release) I noticed a high CPU usage.
It apparently disables Windows Defender, MSE replace it indeed (That's why MSE for XP is larger than MSE for Vista and Windows 7).
I performed a full scan which took 8 hours (to check only 160 Gb HD, and OS files and programs occupied only 60 Gb).
It catched 3 false positives and took 1 hour to try to remove them unsuccessfully.

I also experienced Firefox slowndown.

More: if you use RETURNIL as well you might experience issues

They say MSE is good, I cannot tell more.
For sure you can forget a web protection.
And I think it is bad the fact that updates are pushed via WindowsUpDate

[saturn]

That seems like a long time leo

[leofelix]

That seems like a long time leo

You are right.
It would be nice if MSE were more customizable and users could choose what kind of files to scan

[dredge]

and... if MSE can protect itself better...

[sujay]

I don't like MSE because
1. less ability to customize.
2. Weaker self protection
3. Slow scan speed.
4. Realtime protection often cannot remove the threat, only blocks it.
5. Update problem in proxy server with authentication.
@leofelix: It can be configured to update hourly by doing a registry hack. See here.

[johnshaw1917]

Thanks to all for your responses! I know I can check MSE out by Googling, but I wanted to know what the posters on this forum thought. John

[safeguy]

All I can say is that MSE is good enough for the average Joe...whereas some of us here would prefer to use other free AV (I'm one of those)....