I have these set up to scan but in a month they have found nothing according to the history. Running Win7-64 ultimate. Is it that the maleware out there isn't targeting win 7 or is there something wrong here?
I would never use Microsoft security tools, Defender has never caught anything on my computer. I would never equate Microsoft and security. Watch for the signs of infection, has your computer slowed down, do your homepage and search options change on you? If you think it is infected it probably is. There are tools such as malwarebytes, spybot and others that work, Kaspersky, Panda and other antivirus programs. Some of the free antivirus programs are decent and less resource intensive than Norton or Mcafee. I use Firefox with an addon called noscript, I use a program called mailwasher to screen my mail on the mail server and never download mail to my computer unless I want to archive it. Webmail is moderately safe but you still need to be careful of malicious scripts and attachments.
What Defender does is still a mystery for me, in 4 years he's updating nearly everyday, does some kind of hidden scan but I've never seen any warnings on my screen.
Microsoft's site doesn't allow downloading and says that they are not accepting beta testers but Softpedia still has it on their site. I will give it a shot for a while but I can see Symantec and McCafee suing MS over this if it is offered for free.
I will say this my system is much more stable with MSE vs the AVG I paid for. Haven't had a crash since switch, was crashing weekly with AVG.
mse and win7 hard mod after reading your post i thought i would install it and give it a go,i got to the part when it would check to see if i had a valid windows instillation,and i chickened out,i have a modded bios with slic 2.1,is this a valid win 7 inst.
as long as it says activated in the comp info it *should* work. especially with a hard mod. if you have any cracks i'd be worried, but not with a bios mod.
mse and win7 hard mod well i installed it and it said genuine copy of windows,it updated its virus data base, did a scan found nothing,then a window slide up from the taskbar and said there is an update for the program so i clicked to upgrade button but to my surprise my asus flash bios updater came on the screen,i clicked it off,and the same message about a MSE upgrade slid up again,i clicked to upgrade and my bios flasher popped up again,so i freaked out and uninstalled MSE.
Why do you have both turned on??? Yes, Defender comes with Vista and Win7, but MSE contains both Defender's antispyware and adds the antivirus from their Forefront Security. By default MSE disables Defender upon installation since redundancy of the same scanning engine and definition file is unnecessary. Asus' windows programs have been known to do that for years. They pop up all the time with the most mundane stuff setting them off for no reason. Do yourself a favor and not use their windows programs.
I didn't install any of my MB software with Win 7. IMO MB software couldn't be compatible with WIN7, expecially a BIOS flash program. I'm using a software SLIC21 and have had no issues with MSE.
Thats good info, I didn't know that. Is there a forum or thread somewhere that I could learn more about MSE ?
MSE also re-enabled my automatic updates, if you're one of those people who only updates manually you will want to turn updates off again. MSE also reports back to spynet servers, I don't think that is a big deal but I would like to block the spynet servers in my hosts file. Add these to your host file if you don't want MSE talking to the mother ship. 127.0.0.1 spynettest.microsoft.com 127.0.0.1 dtg445.defenderhosting.com 127.0.0.1 defenderhosting.com After doing the above MSE still managed to talk to MS servers in Redmond. "Send basic information to Microsoft about software that Microsoft Security Essentials detects, including where the software came from, the actions that you apply or that Microsoft Security Essentials applies automatically, and whether the actions were successful. In some instances, personal information might unintentionally be sent to Microsoft. However, Microsoft will not use this information to identify you or to contact you." And after reading the above from the MSE spynet tab I think I am going to uninstall it.
Stay safe Just a thought, but why don't you use Windows as a normal user (IE not administrator) and then use a VM for testing things you download? If you're usually logged into Windows as anormal user, you probably don't need and AV!
To be honest I'd agree with the McAfee part since I stopped using it from the 2008 version. Its very resource hungry. I dont know if they fixed this in later versions though. Norton 2010 is NOT resource hungry I use the beta and to be honest doesn't seem resource hungry to me. PC running fine with it. It does nag you a lot though.
McAfee bogs a system down terribly. MSE is the only one I have found that I can turn on real time scanning and not notice a slow down, its like its not even there.
MSE is the best antivirus software out there. I have been using IE in protected mode on Vista and Windows 7 for the last two and a half years and have never had any issues with malwares. After MSE came out, I gave it a try and found that it had no impact on system performance. So I have kept using it ever since. It will remain free for ever. McAfee and Symantec can do nothing about it, because it won't be bundled with Windows. The perfect way to keep your computer malware-free is: 1.Turn on automatic updates 2.Use MSE 3.Enable UAC 4.Use IE8 in Protected Mode (Do not use Firefox)