MSE AV?

[Davezilla17]

Yesterday I finally uninstalled my McAfee antivirus suite. I have been using it for over a year & got it originally with my ISP (BT Yahoo!).

I have nothing against McAfee, it is just that it is so heavy as an AV suite & slows my laptop down, especially if I get McAfee DAT updates coinciding with Microsoft updates. I've used Norton & Bullguard in the past. I originally got Norton with BT Yahoo! I'm glad they changed to McAfee as Norton was just one headache after another. Bullguard is an Anglo-Swedish AV with BitDefender's engine & the Russian 'Outpost' firewall (I believe). However I really needed to get away from heavy AV suites.

So I thought I would go for the Panda Cloud Free. This is a very light 'cloud' AV & it installed quickly & my computer was much faster. I was quite impressed with its simplicity & ease of use. I ran a quick scan & all seemed fine. Later I ran a full scan & after about 40 mins it reported 3 viruses! I realised that they were false-positives & uninstalled the Panda Cloud. I have since discovered it has a propensity for f/ps.

I decided to try Microsoft Security Essentials (aka MSE). It downloaded easily enough (it does check to make sure you have a genuine version of Windows), updated itself & I ran a full scan. My PC was clean, as I suspected.

Apart from the fact that it disables Windows Defender (which Microsoft believes is superfluous when you use MSE) I was impressed & it is very light & easy to use. AV Comparitives.com rate it highly.

So, if you're looking for a freeware light, effective antivirus program it is worth having a look at MSE.

& to think I nearly originally posted this in Tech ...

[LoudNoise]

Moving to Tech

[Harry Waldron]

Personally, I use MSE as it offers a lightweight basic AV product. It's protective process is more signature based than some of the more advanced paid products that are heuristic in seeing scripted behaviors (however sometimes the behavioral based matching to detect leading edge variants doesn't work that well plus may lead to more false positives). Best Practices and obfuscation (e.g., Firefox, Linux, etc) are certainly great ways to reduce risk as well.

Several posts here related to MSE
http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/hwaldron ... aspx?q=mse

[Harry Waldron]

Copy of a "How to Install" post that I just updated from March below in case you're interested ... You will have to ensure your system is WGA compliant but other that the price is free and it's a good basic product.

Other basic free products you can look at include AVAST or AVG (which I've also used and like). MSE won't offer upsells or pop-ups to upgrade to the full product, although both products might be slightly more advanced in heuristics and behavioral type detections. The MSE user interface is very simple and easy to understand. Finally, sometimes basic protection and KISS principle can help performance (e.g., uninstalled corporate McAfee which was on there from work for VPN purposes and after putting MSE on, my mouse came back to like and the past sluggishness went away on a "cash for clunkers" type PC)

MSE doesn't offer integrated email or other features found in more advanced products, but I've rarely needed that in the past with good spam filtering built even into the free services like gmail, hotmail, or yahoo.

Microsoft Security Essentials - Latest Installation guidelines
http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/hwaldron ... lines.aspx

[Davezilla17]

I know MSE is more simplified than some other AVs & employs a more classical signature based design, but that's one of the things that I like about it. There is also SpyNet with MSE (whatever its efficacy is). McAfee had a lot of great eye-candy & was working fine, but it is really far too heavy for my laptop & was starting to annoy me. I had got so used to a sluggish computer that it seemed natural. The difference in performance with MSE is amazing! I was tempted to have a look at Avast, which would have been my next choice anyway, but MSE is working so well & is so easy to use it is going to be a keeper I think. I was a bit disappointed with the Panda Cloud but I think it could be a contender in the future one day. It was very light.

I have SpywareBlaster, WOT & NoScript & pretty good spam filtering on email. The only downside with MSE was that it deactivated Defender, which I thought had some good tools (Software Explorer). I don't even miss Site Advisor, although I had the choice uninstalling to keep it. I originally got McAfee with my ISP so I got the paid version of SA. I have had a look at the freeware Site Advisor but eventually I uninstalled it. I much prefer WOT & have it synchronised on other browsers. I also have SUPERAntiSpyware as an on-demand scanner (I've used this for 18 months) & BitDefender Quick Scan as an extension on SRWare Iron. Which I think is pretty simple compared to the batteries of anti-malware programs many seem to employ.

At the end of the day, I think most people just want a competent light AV that doesn't try to nag them & gets on with its job of protecting the computer. Four days of using MSE & I am still impressed with it & what it has done for the overall performance of my laptop.

[Omega X]

MSE disables Defender because its basically the same engine. No need to run it twice.

Also, I don't get the complaints about advert popups with Avast. The only advert is in the start pane of the console and the installer. The only time it ever bugs you is when the free license needs renewing.

[praxiseffect]

I switched from Avast! to MSE because it turned out that Avast! was the culprit all this time in my famous thread (gee, if I only uninstalled it instead of AVG, huh?), and I must say i'm crazy impressed with it. It's the perfect companion to on-demand scanning with MalwareBytes.

It found a "Vobfus.inf" in All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Microsoft Antimalware (something Avast! didn't check and MSE initially went off on "Vobfus.inf" in a USB drive I borrowed from the tech guy at my college - thanks alot, Mitch ) in an autorun.inf file, so I removed that. Aside from this its done a good job as far as I can see. I so far haven't seen it warn me of something really nasty, but to be honest Avast! in the 3 years of me using never did either, mostly because i'm a safe surfer and the Ad-Block/No-Script combo on Firefox gets rid of zounds of stuff that otherwise would get to me and i've become increasing paranoid about downloading anything short of Java and Flash updates.

I'm actually flabbergasted that Microsoft, of all places, made such an excellent product.

[Davezilla17]

MSE disables Defender because its basically the same engine. No need to run it twice.

Also, I don't get the complaints about advert popups with Avast. The only advert is in the start pane of the console and the installer. The only time it ever bugs you is when the free license needs renewing.

I know about Defender & why MSE disables it, but I didn't know that about Avast. Avast is VERY popular. I know a lot of people who run it. I reckon that & MSE are the two most popular freeware AVs nowadays. Only a few years ago everyone (who ran freeware AVs) seemed to be using AVG.

[Davezilla17]

I'm actually flabbergasted that Microsoft, of all places, made such an excellent product.

Yeah! Me too. I think it's superb.

[praxiseffect]

Yeah, they're actually doing pretty well in my book right now, with Windows 7 actually exceeding my expectations before its a year old (even XP took me a year and a half before I found it to be anything less than a headache), Chess Titans and now MSE. Shame WMP11 is still inferior to something as simple as Winamp, though.

I have a new laptop that came with a trial of Norton on it. I'm going to take that off and throw MSE on it and see how it works on 64-bit Windows 7.

by the way, I have both MSE and Malwarebytes, even though MSE claims you have to remove all antivirus software, MWB does not run all the time and only runs when I initiate a scan, so I don't think it counts and it wouldn't feel right to remove it.

[praxiseffect]

hmmm... maybe my praises were a little too soon, because MSE is now a suspect in a new problem i'm having with general lagginess around Windows Update and another one involving lags and frame skips on Youtube (and Youtube alone) videos...

It's probably not MSE because this is the same computer I had that Avast problem on, but maybe...

[Davezilla17]

Chess Titans and now MSE.

Yeah, I love Chess Titans, well ... when it isn't cheating!

I have a new laptop that came with a trial of Norton on it. I'm going to take that off and throw MSE on it and see how it works on 64-bit Windows 7.

Norton's a 'trial' that's for sure.

by the way, I have both MSE and Malwarebytes, even though MSE claims you have to remove all antivirus software, MWB does not run all the time and only runs when I initiate a scan, so I don't think it counts and it wouldn't feel right to remove it.

I don't think MBAM counts, unless it's realtime. I have no conflicts with SUPERAntiSpyware as an on-demand scanner.

[Davezilla17]

hmmm... maybe my praises were a little too soon, because MSE is now a suspect in a new problem i'm having with general lagginess around Windows Update and another one involving lags and frame skips on Youtube (and Youtube alone) videos...

It's probably not MSE because this is the same computer I had that Avast problem on, but maybe...

I have noticed a very slight change in overall speed during MSE updates, especially if I am posting on a bulletin board, but it only lasts as long as the update. I only have a gig of RAM & run at about 1.67 ghz so McAfee DATs didn't do me any favours at all & if they coincided with MS updates I was in trouble.

I'd expect some very slight slowdown anyway during an update. It seems relatively innocuous to me though.

[praxiseffect]

well my enjoyment of MSE was short lived. I removed it because it messed with Windows Update - Windows Update would run and slow my computer down so much that Windows Update wouldn't run, Windows would freeze up/be sluggish and I couldn't run any of my programs for about 30 minutes. It was so disruptive, I had to get rid of MSE.

So I can't go back to Avast! with what it does to Firefox, so I guess i'm still looking for an AV.

[Davezilla17]

well my enjoyment of MSE was short lived. I removed it because it messed with Windows Update - Windows Update would run and slow my computer down so much that Windows Update wouldn't run, Windows would freeze up/be sluggish and I couldn't run any of my programs for about 30 minutes. It was so disruptive, I had to get rid of MSE.

So I can't go back to Avast! with what it does to Firefox, so I guess i'm still looking for an AV.

That's a shame. Have a look at these.