So what was the verdict on Microsoft Security Essentials?

[CurseTheSky]

Hi guys,

I maintain somewhere around 10-15 home / family computers, and the biggest issue is always malware, viruses, and other security issues.

Because many of the families can't afford to (or just don't want to) pay for anti-virus software, I generally install the best free programs I can get my hands on (currently Avira Free, Comodo Firewall, and Malware Bytes). Lately Avira's popups have been getting on a number of peoples' nerves, mine included. So, I'm considering making the switch to something else.

I have Microsoft Security Essentials installed on my laptop so far. I'd like to know how it's detection rates and real time protection compare to Avira and other programs. Are there any good reviews out there yet? Last time I checked the reviews were either for the beta version, or too short and biased to really review MSE.

Thanks.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

I don't know of any good comprehensive reviews that are recent, but it seems to be pretty decent in my experience with it.
I still prefer Avira though.

 

[lxskllr]

It gets a thumbs down from me. It seemed ok initially, but I ran into some problems. It used 3* the ram of Avira, the interface is a bit too stripped, and there's no way to stop it from the task bar. I had some internet slowdowns that I suspect(but didn't confirm) MSE caused. Worst of all it crashed Explorer when trying to launch the VLC installer. That's when I uninstalled it.

I've never had a single issue with Avira, and that'll continue to be what I use, and recommend for others.

 

[Dark Penguin]

Seems fine.

 

[Muse]

It gets a thumbs down from me. It seemed ok initially, but I ran into some problems. It used 3* the ram of Avira, the interface is a bit too stripped, and there's no way to stop it from the task bar. I had some internet slowdowns that I suspect(but didn't confirm) MSE caused. Worst of all it crashed Explorer when trying to launch the VLC installer. That's when I uninstalled it.

I've never had a single issue with Avira, and that'll continue to be what I use, and recommend for others.

A bit OT, but I see comments like this frequently and wonder how people make such determinations. Do you just open Task Manager, go to the Performance tab and see what percent of RAM each application is showing and make your assumptions from watching those numbers bump around second by second? Or are there other ways of getting your finger on the pulse of how much resources an application/utility is using?

BTW, I'm continuing to use Avira Free on all my machines. Updates have started working again (5 or so days ago they ground to a halt). Haven't tried downloading the new ~25 MB update yet. I presume that when I do, I can sneaker-net it over to my other machines, or install it over my network).

 

[lxskllr]

A bit OT, but I see comments like this frequently and wonder how people make such determinations. Do you just open Task Manager, go to the Performance tab and see what percent of RAM each application is showing and make your assumptions from watching those numbers bump around second by second? Or are there other ways of getting your finger on the pulse of how much resources an application/utility is using?

BTW, I'm continuing to use Avira Free on all my machines. Updates have started working again (5 or so days ago they ground to a halt). Haven't tried downloading the new ~25 MB update yet. I presume that when I do, I can sneaker-net it over to my other machines, or install it over my network).

In Task Manager, I look at the peak working set, and working set. Working set for MSE was about 128mb, and Avira is about 8mb. Peak working set for Avira was about 128mb, and peak working set for MSE was about 320mb.

 

[Muse]

In Task Manager, I look at the peak working set, and working set. Working set for MSE was about 128mb, and Avira is about 8mb. Peak working set for Avira was about 128mb, and peak working set for MSE was about 320mb.

I don't see where you get these things. I have two XP Pro and one Vista machine. The Vista will be upgraded to Win7 soon. I'm using my XP laptop right now. All machines are running Avira. In Task Manager, Avira doesn't show up under Applications tab. The only place I see anything for it is in the Processes tab, and I'm not sure which processes are Avira related. I assume that Avguard.exe is an Avira process. All I see for each process is Image Name (e.g. avgnt.exe, avguard.exe, firefox.exe, etc.), User Name (either my account or SYSTEM), CPU (which I take to be the percentage of total CPU capacity for the process in question), and Memory in KB, being the portion of total RAM being currently used by that process. So, where are you getting this working set stuff?

 

[lxskllr]

Go to View-Select columns. It should be in there, but this is in Vista. I don't remember if XP offered as many choices or not. You'll be looking under the processes tab for the amount of memory used. These are the 2 processes for Avira...

avgnt.exe
avguard.exe

 

[Muse]

Go to View-Select columns. It should be in there, but this is in Vista. I don't remember if XP offered as many choices or not. You'll be looking under the processes tab for the amount of memory used. These are the 2 processes for Avira...

avgnt.exe
avguard.exe

I had no idea that was there. I've been wondering for a long time how people got the ideas they have about how much resources are being used by programs. I guess the answer is in that screen. Now, I don't see "Peak Memory Set." There is Peak Memory Usage, and I assume that's what you mean. "Memory Set" is also not there, but there's Memory Usage, which is checked by default. Again, I assume that's what you mean by Memory Set. There's a ton of stuff in there I have no idea about! :\ I am on my XP laptop.

 

[lxskllr]

It looks like they more memory options in Vista, and changed the terminology to reflect that. Memory usage, and Peak Memory would tell you what you want to know for XP.

 

[Ksyder]

I've installed MSE a few times in the last couple of days, and it seems o.k... feel worried that some performance problems that suddenly occurred might have something to do with MSE, but this is just wild speculation. Right now its disabled in the system tray on my laptop.

I was having problems with performance (pages not loading, etc) after being away from home for 3 wks... flew from west coast to east and thought maybe something had happened with my laptop during travel... then starting thinking maybe it was the newly installled MSE... but now, after rebooting the router and disabling MSE all seems fine.

edit: just re-enabled real time protection... we'll see if starts giving me problems again.

Hoping that this free AV program pans out well. would be good to give to friends and family rather than Avira + trying to disable those popups.

 

[gsellis]

Using Task Manager to determine memory usage can be misleading. I would run Process Explorer and note that there could be services, device drivers, and other members of process trees that could be involved in a memory analysis. Also, memory usage of something that may be using signature definitions should not be weighted heavily against an application. A) it might be dynamically tuned based on free space, therefore a meaningless criteria (or not) and B) it may have no reflection on real performance and actually using more memory may make the performance faster.

Wish I had more free time as I do want to look at it myself but spend all my spare time lately cutting rocks.

 

[Dark Penguin]

I wish you could setup multiple scans rather than just one. I'd like a quick scan every day and the full scan once a week. Haven't figured out how to do that so far. Don't know if you can.

 

[SunnyD]

AV-Comparatives has their November reports up. MSE is rated Advanced+, and sits just about in the middle of the pack ranked #5 (along with F-Secure) with a 56% detection rate. AntiVir (Premium) still holds the #1 spot for proactive protection with a 74% detection rate (but rates significantly higher on false positives). For comparison's sake, Kaspersky ranks 3rd with a 64% detection rate.

 

[CurseTheSky]

AV-Comparatives has their November reports up. MSE is rated Advanced+, and sits just about in the middle of the pack ranked #5 (along with F-Secure) with a 56% detection rate. AntiVir (Premium) still holds the #1 spot for proactive protection with a 74% detection rate (but rates significantly higher on false positives). For comparison's sake, Kaspersky ranks 3rd with a 64% detection rate.

Great info - thanks.

Looks like Avira is still my choice for my personal virus scanner, and MSE is my choice of the computers where I want to set it and forget it (since people tend to call every time there's a false positive...).

 

[Rottie]

mse looks good on my friends computer but i use Avira on my own computer/laptop/netbook

 

[jjsbasmt]

Seems to work well for me. Several people (about a dozen) have brought me their infected systems in the last month and I have used MS Security Essentials to clean systems that were so bad as to be unusable. For example today I cleaned a Gateway Laptop on Win Vista 32 that had Trend Micro installed that left several trojans behind after a long scan. I personally think that it is easy on system resources and not obtrusive at all. However in all fairness, the remainder of the computers all had expired
AV programs.

 

[mechBgon]

Here's another one to look at: http://mtc.sri.com/live_data/av_rankings/ This shows the detection rate of malware collected within the last 24 hours. Microsoft and AntiVir both do fairly well.

Regarding memory usage, I have 8GB of RAM on my main system, 4GB on the one I'm giving away to my sister... if the worst thing the software does is to use X amount of RAM, then that's no harm, no foul as far as I'm concerned.

Overall, I like AntiVir's free version fairly well too, but it would be even better if it could be configured to "shoot first, ask questions later" like the pay-for version does, instead of asking the user what to do with detected malware. When 12 AntiVir alerts suddenly appear on the screen at once (it seems to max out at 12 at a time, from my malware-hunting adventures), the novice user can get a bit flustered.