Your Windows 7 Antivirus? How is MSE?

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Direwolf20

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At first I was going to go with AVG, which has been my standard Virus Protection for a while now, but my buddy turned me onto Microsoft Security Essentials. How is that one compared to AVG and others?

I liked that MSE was such a small download and install, and doesn't seem to have much of a footprint.
 
I tried it for a couple days, but for some reason, it would thrash my HD so hard that I couldn't do much of anything for 5-7mins. Got tired of it, and re-installed Avira AntiVir. I'm sure it'll get alot better in the next few months as Microsoft optimizes it for different hardware/software configs.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
I tried it for a couple days, but for some reason, it would thrash my HD so hard that I couldn't do much of anything for 5-7mins. Got tired of it, and re-installed Avira AntiVir. I'm sure it'll get alot better in the next few months as Microsoft optimizes it for different hardware/software configs.
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You are the FIRST person that I've heard say something like this about MSE. I have it running on 6 machines, from my sig rig to an Eee PC 1000H netbook. Works like a charm on all those systems.
 
heatlesssun said:
You are the FIRST person that I've heard say something like this about MSE. I have it running on 6 machines, from my sig rig to an Eee PC 1000H netbook. Works like a charm on all those systems.
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Believe me, I was as surprised as hell when I finally narrowed down the source of the problem. For some reason, using real time protection would randomly turn my SSD totally unresponsive. Since I re-installed Avira, this system has been running like a dream. I'll give it another try in a few months to see if they work out the kinks. When it wasn't bogging down my system, it seemed like a very nice basic virus/addware scanner.
 
Every machine I load up now has MSSE on it, as well as any that I have been back to look at. Best anti-virus program out there IMO.
 
Got MSE as soon as it went public. Put it on my girlfriend's Vista laptop and my parents' Vista system.
 
Yea, I don't think I've EVER gotten an actual virus on a PC I've used, and I've been playing with them for 15 years at least. So its not like I'm the average user clicking on the 'Microsoft Antivirus 2009' popups. Still, I like to have it on there to be safe. But I don't want it to be using a lot of resources.

Glad to hear its a good one :).
 
I was running MSE, but went back to my NOD32. Had a few viruses slip by my work's antivirus and hosted filtering (Trend & McAfee). It also wasn't detected by MSE.

Saw that each time I uploaded the virus files to virustotal.com, that Eset already had detection, so I went back. Overall MSE is a good product though.
 
Being free, it's a great product. If you need a free solution, and you're using a Microsoft OS, no reason not to use a Microsoft product.
 
I love it, its not bloated, small and does the job just fine, I used to use AVG before this, always had problems with it.
 
AV-Comparatives.org gave MSE "good" ratings (the highest) in it's October Malware Detection tests. It beat out both AVG and Avira as well as a host of others.

Virus detection rates are also very good, but I'm waiting to see some current tests comparing MSE to others.
 
Direwolf20 said:
Yea, I don't think I've EVER gotten an actual virus on a PC I've used, and I've been playing with them for 15 years at least. So its not like I'm the average user clicking on the 'Microsoft Antivirus 2009' popups. Still, I like to have it on there to be safe. But I don't want it to be using a lot of resources.

Glad to hear its a good one :).
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Nowadays with infected ad banners on legit sites that serve non-local ads, it can happen more easily than you'd think... let alone all the no-obvious-signs malware that just keylogs or whatnot that you'd never know about hidden into seemingly-legit software/sites. I've had a couple of infections, literally: one was a driveby download through an ad banner on a major gaming site that MSE actually detected immediately and quarantined prior to any actual infection, and the other was a program I downloaded and ran that had malware hidden in it despite the program itself working properly, which I discovered because it blocked my net access after a reboot the next morning (I was running Avast at the time, it had detected nothing, however I submitted it to VirusTotal after becoming suspicious prior to the reboot and it found a "possible heuristic" backdoor match). Those are the only two real viruses/malware that I've had slip by me in 10 years that weren't detected prior to trying to scan them manually before running.

If you aren't running an antivirus/antimalware, you have little way to detect anything other than things that present themselves in an obvious manner: it's risky and foolish when free, lightweight programs such as MSE offer excellent protection. They do not impact performance, they cost nothing, and offer only benefits. I'm considering grabbing a second program such as Norton 2009 (much better than older versions) or NOD32 to help layer my protection.

SicKlown42012, not sure why you had that issue, I run an SSD myself with no trouble on MSE :(.
 
I use ClamWin on Win 7. Been running Win 7 RTM since it hit the Action Pack DL site the other month.

I have used MSE on a lot of PCs and I love it! Some for customers too. I have had no complaints or issues from them.
The only issue I have noticed is that it's a bit sluggish on PCs without a lot of RAM - like 512MB or less. Otherwise it works very well!
 
Just today I got a BSOD in Win 7 x64 during MSE's very first av scan. Could of been a coincidence ... or not.
 
MSE takes ages to let me access a 1gb folder with random .exe files, installers of acrobat, benches, etc, didnt happen with Avast!, and actually never got infected with it, hope MS fixes the real time scan engine or tweak it soon.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
Believe me, I was as surprised as hell when I finally narrowed down the source of the problem. For some reason, using real time protection would randomly turn my SSD totally unresponsive.
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First off, MSE does an initial scan as soon as you get it fully updated. If you have a lot of .cab or any type of archives on your system it really has a problem getting through those. It might be what your problem is. Did you check it to make sure it was not doing the initial scan during this 'thrashing' period? You can turn off scanning archives as well.
 
bigdogchris said:
First off, MSE does an initial scan as soon as you get it fully updated. If you have a lot of .cab or any type of archives on your system it really has a problem getting through those. It might be what your problem is. Did you check it to make sure it was not doing the initial scan during this 'thrashing' period? You can turn off scanning archives as well.
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I went through all kinds of different options in the program, and I could only avoid the issue by turning Active Protection off, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of an AV software running in the background. Using Avira, with allowing it to scan archives, I haven't had a hint of trouble. If MSE would only hitch for 30-60 sec, I really wouldn't mind, but having my computer unresponsive for 5 mins is a deal killer for me.
 
I have MSE installed on 2 computers, vista 64 and win7 64 rc. The vista machine has the hard drive thrashing for 5 to 7 minutes, the win7 computer does not do this.
 
I was running the MSE beta on my machine when it was running Vista Business x64, and it worked perfectly then. I've been running Windows 7 Ultimate (7600, RTM) and the public release of MSE for a little over a month now, and it woks perfectly. Light weight real time protection, etc.

Works absolutely fine for me.
 
Switched over from Avira, works great, easy to use, loving it so far. Integrates nicely as well.
 
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