I use Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) on a Windows XP machine. A month ago, it failed to catch a virus that gave fake virus warnings. In my research, it was called the Windows 2012 virus. It was strange. My wife’s account was infected and it was unusable because of all the fake virus warnings. They would pop up until the machine ran out of memory and locked up. However, my ID on the same machine was fine and appeared to be completely unaffected.
MSE on my ID would not detect or remove the virus and it could not run on her ID. A friend removed the virus and everything appears to be fine on both ID’s. Multiple scans with MSE and another virus scanner (not automatically running so no conflict with MSE) detects nothing.
There is, however, one minor lingering problem. MSE will not automatically update. It starts but aborts due to a “network or connection error.” I can manually download and install the virus definitions but would prefer to get the auto update working again if anyone has suggestions.
Ronny
