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Microsoft free antivirus program any good?

I understand that MSSE does a pretty decent job of protecting MS products but does not deal with non-MS products like Adobe, WinZip, etc.

FWIW, for the next few days (often repeated though) frys.com has a rebate on the new version of Norton Internet Security 2011 that brings the cost down to zero. NIS 2011 has received some very good reviews but YMMV. I have been happy with the 2010 version and am in the process of upgrading to the 2011 version, now for free thanks to the rebate.
 
Norton makes my old computer feel like that photo that was floating around the interwebs where someone had loaded about a 4-foot stack of plywood on top of a subcompact car. :sigh:
 
Ultra-Hog said:
I understand that MSSE does a pretty decent job of protecting MS products but does not deal with non-MS products like Adobe, WinZip, etc.
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I'm not clear on the implication of this. I don't recall ever having a virus attack WinZip or Adobe, but I'm not sure that's what you actually mean. Afaik, the point is to protect the OS because without that not much else matters.
 
I run spybot and adaware

I do not have a active virus program on my pc's

I never have any problems

maybe I am just lucky

avast and avg seem like they slow everything down
 
Five years ago and back, I used to use Norton, and that really slowed my computor down, from a 800 pentium down to the speed of a 200 pentium.
 
Microsoft Security Essentials has been getting consistently good reviews since it's release. I have two networks that I manage; one uses McAfee, the other MSE. No problems so far (with either).

I suspect that MSE combined with Malwarebytes is as good a solution as you can find.

As others have said, the bad guys are always ahead of the good guys.
 
Qwaxalot said:
As others have said, the bad guys are always ahead of the good guys.
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I sure wish we did not have to worry about viruses, worms, trojans, & the likes, but in one good sense the Anti-Virus business will continue to flourish for some time.

The bad part is that many computer users lose data & have hard drive issues from these sick people that deliberately seek out to render some poor soul some computer trouble.

They have to pony up monies they otherwise would not have to in order to restore their data. It is a shame, indeed!

I will never forget the first time I got my ole Premio & at that time there was a computer virus that supposedly when infected your computer a little avatar of some kind would walk across your screen as it turned black & stated, "I got you." Your computer would crash & only a fresh install would help.

Mind you, I knew nothing about computers at that time as was terrified I would get this menace on my computer.

Thank God it never happened, but I did feel so sorry for those who did get the virus.

Just venting,
Rome
 
I was not impressed with the free microsoft product. I tired to use some free anti-virus products, and my wife's PC got so badly infected that I had reformat and start-over. I have tried several free products inclusing Avast, Panda, Microsoft, and Malwarebytes. I found that each of these was insufficient to keep machines form getting infected, and none could clean her latest infection.

The latest reviews of antivirus product ranked the free Ad-aware product as the best of the free products catching something like 75% of all viruses. But it still fell short of the paid stuff which was closer to 90%. And the AVG was pretty good at removal, but was lousy at stopping them in the first place.

Personally I am back to running Webroot's product again since nothing ever penetrated it on any of my system's before. This one got the Editor's choice in the November lineup in PCMagazine, and I will no longer use the free products. Free sounds great until you catch an actual virus and can't clean it off of your system, and the headaches and hassle was simply not worth the $40 saved to me.
 
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I've been using ESET NOD32 Antivirus for the last 2 years and plan to renew this year. I buy a 2 computer subscription for less money and share it with my mother. We both have had very good luck with it.

As far MSSE I have read good reviews and see no reason for you not to try try it.

I gave up on free AVG. To me it got too bulky and the constant prompts to upgrade to the pay version got on my nerves. It was confusing to my mother as well. Also, I have a friend who got infected while using AVG free and AVG was not able to clean out his system. ESET was able to clean his system out though.
 
What OS are you on?

I've seen intermittent issues with MSSE and XP -- on some computers it can be a resource hog, for no real reason. You'll notice this if its the case.

Works well on Vista and 7. Vista and 7, by design, are far more secure and less prone to malware.

I would guess I've installed it on 50+ computers with good overall results.

AVG has burned me too many times, my second place vote for free protection is Avast!

dew.
 
dew042 said:
What OS are you on?

I've seen intermittent issues with MSSE and XP -- on some computers it can be a resource hog, for no real reason. You'll notice this if its the case.
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Interesting. I may have one computer where this is the case...the one serving up my streaming webcam. I have to do some closer checking to figure out if it's MSSE or something else. Not a real powerhouse anyway with PIII @ 1.2GHz and 512MB RAM.
 
Well I did it, removed my McAfee and installed the Microsoft antivirus software, the computor is a lot faster now, moving the mouse pointer around, it is very smooth.
 
HiFiCanada said:
Well I did it, removed my McAfee and installed the Microsoft antivirus software, the computor is a lot faster now, moving the mouse pointer around, it is very smooth.
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Good to hear. If I had a penny for every time McAfee or Norton was the source of a computer problem, I'd be a rich man.
 
I have had the most of the free scanners but only msse does what it should do.
Last year i had a paid verion of Kaspersky wich i did'nt like so much it slowed down my computer and took a century to scan my primary diskdrive.
Pc specs
Core i7 860 @4ghz
4 gig ram

I think the pc shuld be fast enough ;-)
With msse i can game while it is scanning the pc and is alot faster too.

Years ago i had norton too that was really slow and i could'nt use the computer while scanning
That was a p2 350 with 256mb ram
 
I think they give you a 6 month free license but and the end you will have to pay for an upgrade. There are a lot of free and good antivirus software out there. I'm currently using ZenOK free antivirus to protect my important files, Its a good one.
 
LCDeuce said:
If running an AV program is slowing down your PC you may start thinking about upgrading. With multiple core CPUs and off-the-shelf desktops coming with 4gigs of RAM there shouldn't be any issues that aren't user based or due to slow hardware.
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Yep, I have a dual core processor and 4 gigs of ram in my laptop and have Avast running all the time. Don't see any slowing down of the system by it. :no:
 
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