Microsoft Security Essentials is a
Free Antivirus Utility
Microsoft Security Essentials is a free utility that provides real-time
protection to identify and eliminate harmful viruses and other malware from
your PC. Today we’ll take a look at how it performs and the protection it has
to offer.
Microsoft
Security Essentials (MSE) is free Anti-Malware protection that replaces their
previous “pay for” utility One Care. This version provides real-time protection
and runs quietly in the background.
Before
installation make sure there is no other Antivirus or spyware application
running on the machine. However, you don’t need to turn off Windows Defender,
because MSE takes care of it for you.
You will
have to validate your copy of Windows to be able to install and use Security
Essentials.
The user
interface is basic, simple, and easy to use. After installation it will update
the virus definitions right away. After that it will update itself
automatically in the background so once installed it truly is a “set it
and forget it” process.
After the
database is updated the computer status turns green. There are 4 tabs at the
top that allow you to control different functions.
Under
Settings you can choose what actions it should take with malware based on its
threat level.
By default
Real-time protection is enabled but if you want to disable it you want. The
Real-time protection is light on system resources and doesn’t slow down other
processes at all.
It shows a
green icon in the notification area letting you know your system is protected.
Progress
is displayed while a manual scan takes place and tells you the amount of time
it takes. Scan times will vary between systems based on amount of files and
hardware performance.
It works
like most other Antivirus apps and lets you scan a single file.
If a
threat is detected a red attention screen pops up in the Notification Area and
you can clean the threat right away based on your recommended actions or find
out more detail about the threat.
If you
want more details, they actually provide a good amount of information on a threat.
When in the details screen you can change the recommend action if you want and
clean it from there.
During out
tests we tried to download an infected file, but MSE stopped it and wouldn’t
allow the download to continue unless manually selecting to ignore it. This is
very nice so someone doesn’t ignore the warnings, click out of the screens, and
try to download and install the app anyway.
For
testing we ran this on the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium but it will
also work with XP and Vista. It is light on system resources and runs quietly
without constantly popping up messages and annoying you. It does pop up a
message when it matters though. If a threat is found it will pop up a red alert
to let you know about the malware and decide what actions to take. It’s nice to
have a free anti-malware utility that is easy to use and effective. While
Microsoft doesn’t always offer the best security solutions, they seem to have
gotten this one right.
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