Microsoft Security Essentials Review Discussion

Microsoft's Security Essentials antivirus suite recently came out of beta and is free for anyone running a genuine copy of Windows. How does it stack up to other antivirus suites? Read on for our analysis.

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I'm so happy this works as it should, plus you don't even notice that it's running! I will definitely be using this with my Windows 7 (or Norton 2010 I got for free, I haven't decided).

Question though, does this look for rootkits?

 

I noticed it was stated that it only used 4mb of ram. I linked a picture of my task manager with it running and I notice it uses around 4mb of ram but there is a service called "anitmalware service executable" that uses a little over 50mb.

Since I am not running anything but WSE atm I'm assuming that service can be attributed to it also....or am I wrong? Not 100% sure since I just switched to Win 7 but don't know what else would have a service called that.

 

Thanks for the review. I'll probably end up installing this on a few PCs in the office, see how it works out. Small nitpick though, is "Requires Windows Genuine Advantage" really a con?

 

I installed it and i must say its good and its free.. it using about 64Mb of ram which is much better than mc afee.. and not to mention my number of proceses dropped by 10+... but i need a new system utilities.. is there a good system utilities?

 

No, that is right, many people seem to not notice that process and only notice the one that uses a little ram.

 

Its about time Microsoft did something about the egregious security issues of Windows. Should be standard.

 

Yes, because Microsoft Windows is responsible for almost all of the malware, spambots etc on the Internet.

 

How on earth could "Requires Windows Genuine Advantage" be a con?
In my opinion, it's rather a pro.

But Notebookreview.com maybe encourage pirated software?

 

When my license runs out for NIS 2010, I will certainly be using MSE. Especially when I finally get around to installing Windows 7.

 

Nice review Chaz ... this is one review I was looking forward to checking out.

It seems to be on par with other free antivirus offerings out there in terms of features. One difference, though, is that it is not a limited trial offer.

 

It's a con because it implies MS does not trust the end user is running genuine Windows and that rubbed me the wrong way. While it is a small issue I had to mention something under cons.

 

It's not allowed to be standard due to anti trust lawsuits.

 

I installed MSE a while back on an old desktop computer (WinXP + Pentium 4) and MsMpEng.exe slowed the computer down quite a bit. I had to disable the realtime protection to get the computer back to normal. MsMpEng.exe still sits in memory even after disabling realtime protection and consumes around 50MB.

 

Alternatives like Avira and certainly Avast can hardly be considered as trials.

On a side note, MSE's update frequency is a tad limited.
If a notebook isn't rebooted for days but instead put in sleep mode, MSE can miss updates for up to 6 days and it will still show "I'm up-to-date".
Only after 6 days a yellow exclamation mark will appear and MSE will try to update off-schedule.

While it's an unlikely scenario that a notebook/computer will be in sleep-mode exactly during the signatures update schedule for 6 consecutive days, it's possible, so keep it in mind if you often/always use sleep-mode.
Source: Heise Security link

 

Until the announcement of Microsoft Security Essentials, I used either Avira or Avast on my old 2.4GHz P4 2GB WinXP system, as I needed a rather resource light AV solution. Some time ago, I switched from Avira to Avast because of the aggravatingly slow download speed of Avira's Free server. Avast has been an excellent AV solution.

A few days after Microsoft announced Security Essentials, I fully uninstalled Avast using Revo Uninstaller, and installed Security Essentials. Well... MS states that it's light on resources, but it's not as light as Avast as this old P4 system became noticeably slower, especially in the time it takes from boot to loading Firefox or Thunderbird.

To make a long story short, I'm back with Avast.

 

Sadly, I can confirm the update problems. I will stay with MSE for the next few days until my copy of win7 arrives and I have to reinstall my system (at the moment I am still running the RC).

If they don't fix this problem till then I will revert back to the free version of Avira, with the advertisement pop up turned off it does an acceptable and unobtrusive job.

 

Good review, Chaz. So is MSE your current choice for AV? I'm still debating over whether or not I should use AVG 9 or MSE once I install Windows 7. Will you be doing a review on AVG 9 in the near future?

BTW, you should edit the review regarding the RAM usage, because like the others mentioned, MsMpEng.exe is a process used by MSE which uses a decent amount of memory.

 

MSE is not that good in updating frequently. If you set Windows Update to manually update, MSE won't update itself for a week without notice. Also you need to click three times to do an update while most AV's (including Avira free) do it with one right click on the taskbar icon.
But it serves it's job well as a free AV.

 

My personal choice is ESET NOD32, works extremely well. I did a review of that last year.

The AVG 9 Free review is coming shortly.

 

Awesome, I was just about to ask about this too. I'm currently running AVG, and wondering if I should switch, though I've never had any problems at all, and am quite pleased with AVG.

 

Ya, I'm in the same boat. I'm about to install Windows 7 today and I don't know whether to install AVG 9 or MSE.

What should I do?

 

MSE was more pro-active in my testing with virus/malicious software detection but AVG is a bit more feature rich. If you already have AVG and have no issues with it then I think your choice is made for you.

 

Considering that I disable the extra features of AVG such as the link scanner and surf-shield, I think I'll go ahead with MSE once I install Windows 7.
Compatibility shouldn't be an issue

It's nice to try something different for a change too. And if MSE is already this good at version 1, I feel that the future updates will continue to improve it. As long as they keep it simple and avoid adding in extra bloatware, then I'll be happy.

Microsoft is really starting to improve it's image with quality products as of late. With great reviews for both Win 7 and MSE, things are looking good.

 

I've been running MSE on my Win7 x64 laptop for over a week now.. it's actually caught one threat so far that would have wrecked my computer. Another great part about it is that it will mark a file so that you cannot open it and it will give you "Access denied" even if you try to force open the file with the trojan/virus/etc.

This is a great, free product! A+ Microsoft.

 

<style class='Hidden'>Great review boss</style>

 

What is happening!!

Thanks for the review Chaz!

 

Great review.

 

Thank you guys for the review. I knew this package was going to be good. Thank you, Microsoft! And thank you, Apple??? Probably it's their initiative to make microsoft stronger

 

I'm strictly an MSE user now. It's so clean and professional.