On my laptop MsMpEng.exe is currently using 85MB of RAM which is not a problem since i have 4GB of RAM, and besides, i don't feel a slowdown since i installed MSE at all !
I love it. It's free and does exactly what it has to do. It's nice that there are still some anti-virus solutions that do not come with ads, burning software, ring tones or whatever...
I found that MSE is not so effective and some time it render to allow virus in computer as it is. But I dont have any other antivirus hence continue with MSE. one thing that I continously do is that update it every day and full scan with every day.
Personally I don't use Anti Virus software. Sandboxie and VirusTotal for me. However, I do recommend and install MSE on others computers. It's light, free, simple to use, no reactivating, or upgrading. Just be sure you do the registry hack to opt out of Spynet completely and you have decent product.
My experience is that Security Essentials works very well with Windows 7. On my XP box MsMpEng.exe will occasionally have very high CPU usage, causing the machine to become non-responsive for a few seconds.
I use MSE and like it. If I had to use something else it would be Avira. I have checked a couple of Windows 7 machines both x86 and x64 and I am not seeing MsMpEng.exe running or using any resources. Just the very small msseces.exe running, 2,436 K in the case of the machine that I am on right now. Very light if you ask me.
There are most definitely two processes connected with MSE. One much smaller service (I assume it's connected to the interface) which is about 2-3k, and then one larger process MsMpEng.exe which is 50k+. On Windows 7 x64, MsMpEng.exe runs at 85k... much higher than most of the other products I've looked at. By default, MsMpEng.exe is hidden and you have to "View processes for all users" to actually see it. In comparison, Avira uses a total of 27K on Windows 7 x64.
Ah. There it is, I see it now. Anyone know how much memory Windows defender uses, which would be running if MSE was not? In other words does Avira plus Windows Defender use less resources than MSE?
MSE is by far the best free antivirus software for Windows 7. Haven't had an issue with it in the last 12 months.
MSE activates Windows Defender as well... pretty sure that is what MsMpEng.exe is. I do not use Defender at all, you can get by without it (...except MSE requires it).
I used to use MSE on my Win7X86..Its not the best but satisfactory, now I use Kaspersky Pure on my Win7x86 and ESET SS(x64) on my Win7x64
I just upgraded MSE to a new version and it catched the installers of chew-wga 0.9 and removewat 2.2.5.2 as viruses. It never did that before the upgrade and they always were there. It clearly isn't a false positive cause it detected rw as "HackTool:Win32/Wpakill.B" and chew as "HackTool:Win32/Wpakill.C", so it does know it is for disabling wpa. I don't know if it detects whether it is isntalled or not (I guess not cause that's wat's work), but I just wanted to let you know you should be carefull with mse. And now I wonder what HackTool:Win32/Wpakill.A could be, and mabe D,E,F,... EDIT: Post 500
Anybody who was put off by the interface in Avast 4 and hasn't seen or used Avast 5 should take another look. Avast 5 like a completely different antivirus programme to Avast 4, and is supposedly much improved performance and effectiveness wise. In reality, the best antivirus changes from month to month, but overall Avast, and some of the others people have mentioned are grouped with the best effectiveness wise. Performance wise, thats a different story, but Avast 5 is also grouped with the best in my opinion when it comes to performance.
I've been swearing by MSE for customers of mine who only want a free antivirus. Both AVG and Avast have let things through that MSE was able to clean up after them.