Microsoft Security Essentials

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I have received a CD from Microsoft as a freebie in a PC magazine. It contains Microsoft Security Essentials and IE8. I think I will install IE8 but am concerned about Microsoft Security Essentials. Will it give an exrtra layer of security to my Norton AV 2010 and Spyware Doctor or is there a danger of conflicts?

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I think I will install IE8 but am concerned about Microsoft Security Essentials. Will it give an exrtra layer of security to my Norton AV 2010 and Spyware Doctor or is there a danger of conflicts?

Microsoft Security Essentials is an antivirus program. You should only run one “real time” antivirus program at a time.

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Microsoft Security Essentials is an antivirus program. You should only run one “real time” antivirus program at a time.

and yet whitedragon 551 says “Not one single AV or Antimalware program has 100% detection which is why its better to go with a multilayered security setup.”

There seems to be a major difference of opinion here.

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and yet whitedragon 551 says “Not one single AV or Antimalware program has 100% detection which is why its better to go with a multilayered security setup.”

There seems to be a major difference of opinion here.

Real time and on demand are different. Its NOT a good thing to have multiple real time AV programs installed and running at the same time. They will conflict with each other. If however you have lets say NOD32 and KAV installed at the same time. NOD32 is your real time protection and you use only KAV as an on demand scanner thats also ok as long as you turn one off before you turn on and scan with the other.

Multilayered doesnt mean having multiple AV apps at the same time either. Multilayered includes having an Antivirus, Antispyware, and in some cases anti trojan, standalone firewall, and maybe even a sandboxing type program depending on the security softwares capability.

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My recommendation is that you uninstall both Norton and Spyware Doctor and install Security Essentials instead. You should find your computer running faster, being more responsive. MSE checks for both viruses and spyware in a single check, rather than the 2 or more that Norton and SD use. This will also improve system stability.

If you want to get your money’s worth (and not uninstall your paid programs right away) then at least consider the “upgrade” when it’s time to renew. If you don’t like MSE, you can always go back.

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Especially Norton and to an extent, Spyware Doctor, tend to gobble lots of RAM and CPU cycles. They are resource hogs. Uninstall both and go with MSE for both AV and Malware protection. I would suggest an uninstaller called REVO Uninstaller. This roots out all the garbage the products uninstallers leave behind. REVO has some of the best recommendations I have ever read, and it’s FREE!!!!
Ted

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Especially Norton and to an extent, Spyware Doctor, tend to gobble lots of RAM and CPU cycles. They are resource hogs. Uninstall both and go with MSE for both AV and Malware protection. I would suggest an uninstaller called REVO Uninstaller. This roots out all the garbage the products uninstallers leave behind. REVO has some of the best recommendations I have ever read, and it’s FREE!!!!
Ted

Perhaps you havent played with NIS2010. Its extremely light on resources and a top tier antivirus solution this time around.

MSE has earned horrible ratings in detection, but excels in its resource usage. Id rather be protected than keep my resources.

Not one single AV or Antimalware program has 100% detection which is why its better to go with a multilayered security setup. MSE will miss alot of stuff that NIS and SD or another antispyware app will detect.

I also would urge you to stay away from Spyware Doctor as well. SD is scare ware. With its free trial it claims more spyware is present than there actually is. It scares you into thinking you need it to be safe when in reality you dont. There are much better and lighter alternatives. For a better alternative check out MBAM (Malware Bytes Antimalware) or SAS (Super Anti Spyware). Both have top notch detection and MBAM offers a free version.

For which AV and antispyware app you should choose have a look here in this thread:

http://lounge.windowssecrets.com/index.php?showtopic=769764

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MSE has earned horrible ratings in detection, but excels in its resource usage.

“Horrible”? Where was that?

For which AV and antispyware app you should choose have a look here in this thread:

It’s a nice enough post, but mentioning it in every thread seems like spamming.

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”Horrible”? Where was that?

It’s a nice enough post, but mentioning it in every thread seems like spamming.

Maybe I should have used a better word rather than horrible. Its sub par compared to other free products out there. SuperAntispyware and MBAM are just a few that are better and also free. As for free AVs Avast has better detection rates as well as Avira Antivir Free.

Im just simply helping out. It has all the information the OP needs to make an informed decision on his security setup.

If included the screenshots which place Avast, Avira, AVG, and other free AV solutions over MSE.

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Especially Norton . . . . tend to gobble lots of RAM and CPU cycles. They are resource hogs.

It never ceases to amaze me how many so-called “knowledgeable” users continue to spout this nonsense. Really Ted, you should actually have some facts prior to posting your (probably second-hand) “opinions”.

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Let’s post some actual numbers, shall we?
On my 32bit Windows 7 computer, running MSE: 2516KB memory usage
On my 32bit Windows XP computer, runing Symantec Endpoint Protection (ver 11.0): 3 processes totalling 13616KB memory usage

Now, that’s the Symantec corporate edition, (not including Network Access Control.) It’s a lot less bloated than Norton.

Anyone care to post number for Norton’s usage? Be sure to include all the included bells and whistles.
Also, can someone post memory usage for SuperAntiSpyware?

As for effectiveness: Microsoft Scores better on VB100 than competitors
Now, before you go saying “forefront is not security essentials”, let me point out that MSE is the same engine as Forefront 2.0 (which is delayed until November 2010 due to management server integration.)

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Let’s post some actual numbers, shall we?
On my 32bit Windows 7 computer, running MSE: 2516KB memory usage
On my 32bit Windows XP computer, runing Symantec Endpoint Protection (ver 11.0): 3 processes totalling 13616KB memory usage

Now, that’s the Symantec corporate edition, (not including Network Access Control.) It’s a lot less bloated than Norton.

Anyone care to post number for Norton’s usage? Be sure to include all the included bells and whistles.
Also, can someone post memory usage for SuperAntiSpyware?

As for effectiveness: Microsoft Scores better on VB100 than competitors
Now, before you go saying “forefront is not security essentials”, let me point out that MSE is the same engine as Forefront 2.0 (which is delayed until November 2010 due to management server integration.)

Those numbers dont mean anything. NIS2010 uses more than 2516KB, but its the lightest AV on the market right now. Eset NOD32 is at 91,000KB on my laptop. Also lighter and snappier in terms of usage than MSE.

If anything this proves my exact point. Its only strong point is its resource management. Its not even that good at that.

VB100’s list also includes Avast, AVG, Avira Personal, all of which have better detection rates over MSE and are all also free.

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Just a note: I’m actively running both MSE and Avira on Windows XP…..No conflicts or measured slow downs. I agree 1 single AV soloution never seems to cut it!

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never run more than one Anti-virus Avira & Avast are top rated free-wares & have used them both over the year’s (one at a time) with no conflict
using Avast5 beta now

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Running two antivirus programs is NOT recommended by ANYONE in the security industry. Here is one of many, many articles on the subject.

Now, back to memory usage. Memory usage IS important to anyone running an older system. NOD using 91MB of memory? That’s not a big deal–if you have 4GB of RAM. If you’re running an older XP system with only 512MB of memory, that’s 17% of the system’s memory–quite a big chunk. Launch a couple of programs and your swap file is going to go nuts and your system slow to a crawl. Having that extra 85MB of RAM will let you do a whole lot more with your system. After all, we don’t buy our systems to run security programs, we buy them to do other things.

On to effectiveness:
MSE scores a Pass on the VB100
MSE scores Advanced+, Symantec Advanced, and McAfee Standard

Thank you for the links, whitedragon. It’s nice to have some third-party validation for the effectiveness of Microsoft Security Essentials.

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MSE scores Advanced+, Symantec Advanced, and McAfee Standard

It’s nice to have some third-party validation for the effectiveness of Microsoft Security Essentials.

Then again, from the other side, I’m the proud owner of a system that doesn’t like MSE at ALL!

I’ve posted in other threads about the ongoing clash of MSE and a utility that I have used for years. Now it’s been shouting false positives about some Zone Alarm Firewall files.
It will also NOT allow you to opt out of it’s reporting scheme to tell them of it picking up new hazards ( virusmalware? ) that it has found on your computer.

I have been working with many Microsoft tech types ( since it was released ) assigned to MSE and the anomaly has been elevated to about level 4 in their R&D group for MSE. Still no results or answers and all I get are emails saying they are “studying the situation”.
BTW, this is on my XP partition that the problem is most evident. On my Vista partition it sort of works but is slower than a moon snail on the mudflats.
( as they say in my neck of the woods )
I haven’t even bothered to try it on Win7.
I know, I’m one of the lucky ones!

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Running two antivirus programs is NOT recommended by ANYONE in the security industry. Here is one of many, many articles on the subject.

Now, back to memory usage. Memory usage IS important to anyone running an older system. NOD using 91MB of memory? That’s not a big deal–if you have 4GB of RAM. If you’re running an older XP system with only 512MB of memory, that’s 17% of the system’s memory–quite a big chunk. Launch a couple of programs and your swap file is going to go nuts and your system slow to a crawl. Having that extra 85MB of RAM will let you do a whole lot more with your system. After all, we don’t buy our systems to run security programs, we buy them to do other things.

On to effectiveness:
MSE scores a Pass on the VB100
MSE scores Advanced+, Symantec Advanced, and McAfee Standard

Thank you for the links, whitedragon. It’s nice to have some third-party validation for the effectiveness of Microsoft Security Essentials.

Running 2 AVs in Real time is not recommended. The article is talking about running 2 in real time as proven by this quote:

Wrong. Antivirus applications are like PC guard dogs, sniffing around for suspicious intruders and ripping them to shreds before they can damage your files. Unfortunately, the only thing they hate more than viruses is other antivirus applications. Antivirus software works at a very low level to do its job properly; it snoops in portions of Windows, memory, and other places where high-level programs, such as Web browsers, dare not go.

When two antivirus programs start prowling around, all sorts of problems happen, ranging from program crashes to system lockups.Because these programs typically remain on all the time, they generally load as soon as Windows boots, which means if you install more than one antivirus application on your PC, both programs load automatically and lock up the system before there’s a chance to troubleshoot.

The specifically say that both programs run automatically. If you use one as real time and one as on demand and turn the other off during a scan there is NOT a single issue unless the other AV is strictly coded to detect the other AV installed.

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Your rights about the real-time vs. on-demand scanning. This is a critical distinction.

AV Comparatives proves my point.

As discussed in other threads, the AV Comparatives “prospective” tests — testing how AV products do against new malware if the user stops updating the software — is an interesting data point, but I suggest that because AV software is updated so frequently, it is only one way of measuring effectiveness.

The most interesting experiment, which cannot be run because it would be a risky experiment on human subjects, would be to examine the infection rates of actual customers across the vendor’s installed base and controlling for the typical behavior of those customers (for example, college students use computers differently than parents).

Even then, technology ages, so the bad guys may figure out how to deceive a product until its next major release. Predicting future performance is a difficult business!

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Now please do some research on the subject before you start typing nonsense. Its this false information that… blah, blah, blah.

Whitedragon, I’ve been a member of the Lounge for a number of years now. I see that you have been a member for two whole days. Perhaps you can benefit from some observations I have made on its culture. This is a place where you can discuss issues, resolve problems and contribute to the general body of knowledge. We do this civilly and in a collegial atmosphere. If we do not agree with some opinion or other, we are free to express our own opinion. If we believe someone is wrong, we diplomatically offer a correction. We do not insult or disrespect other members nor do we go off on fanboy rants for our favorite-product-of-the week. We try to help each other here, not one-up them.

Let me offer a suggestion: contribute constructively or do not contribute at all.

Welcome to the Lounge!

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About 3 weeks ago, Microsoft Support determined that the reason on of my companies’ production servers was bluescreening daily was due to the Symantec Endpoint Protection IPS driver. Uninstalling Symantec caused the daily bluescreens to cease.

So, I’ve similar experiences with Symantec.

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About 3 weeks ago, Microsoft Support determined that the reason on of my companies’ production servers was bluescreening daily was due to the Symantec Endpoint Protection IPS driver. Uninstalling Symantec caused the daily bluescreens to cease.

So, I’ve similar experiences with Symantec.

The only workaround, NOT a solution, from MS thus far, is to put the offending file ( .exe, .dll etc. ) in the excluded list in MSE. This seems to work BUT it does lower the security level in MSE.

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