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Microsoft Security Essentials (New Version)


Andavari

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According to the Facebook page of "Tweaking.com" the new MSE is much faster than previous ones.

 

Quote:

I want 3 things from an AV for my customers.

1. Free

2. Won't slow the system.

3. No nags, toolbars or any crap to try and make money off my users.

 

So I was using Microsoft 2 years ago, v2 I think. And it was horribly slow. Opening an 11 mb file took 11 sec to open on brand new machines and during that time you could see the CPU of Microsoft security essentials maxed out. So I dumped it and moved to others trying to find one that worked.

 

I used Avira for a bit then they sold out and starting adding a toolbar you had to have installed to even use them. Moved to Panda and they where a pain, tried many others and then moved to Avast for the last year or so. While Avast had the faster scanner out there it has become to annoying and the amount of false positives is driving me nuts.

 

"So today I got rid of avast and grabbed the newest Microsoft security essentials. And I did my test on that same 11 mb file that took 11 sec to open last time. This time it took less than 1 sec to open and cpu barley moved.

 

Looks like they really improved the performance. So looks like I will be moving my customers and my self back to Microsoft security essentials. (After a little more testing)

 

This means no more nag screens, no more toolbar or browser downloads so they can make their money, and to top it off MS has the fewest amount of false positives out of all them.

 

Does this mean Microsoft security essentials is my favorite? Nope. I have no favorite. They all have limits and none of them are perfect and I have cleaned viruses off of every type of system with every known AV out there.

 

But for my 3 rules Microsoft security essentials finally fits the bill. Lets hope it stays that way.

 

Thanks for the input from my fellow users and techs, and remember if you have a favorite that is fine, just make sure what the reason are why they are your favorite. While an Antivirus might have been good at one point doesn't mean they stay that way, McAfee and Symantec are good examples of that.

 

If you want to compare speed, false positives and detection rates of all the AV's check out http://www.av-comparatives.org/

 

Some of the biggest names out there have really gone down hill :-)

System setup: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/gcNzIPEjEb0B2khOOBVCHPc

 

A discussion always stimulates the braincells !!!

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Thanks for posting that Willy2. The next time I make a disk image I'll play around a bit with the newest MSE.

 

The biggest problem I had with the previous version was the scanning speed got far worse (a full scan that normally took 2hrs 5mins max had morphed into a 6hrs 30mins plus scan time that was only halfway done). Hopefully this current version actually fixes the slowness that has severely plagued it for so long.

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@MikeW: Not even with large files ? Then perhaps the combination with other programs are causing MSE to slow down. It wouldn't the first instance where there's a "clash" between two or more programs.

System setup: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/gcNzIPEjEb0B2khOOBVCHPc

 

A discussion always stimulates the braincells !!!

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Then perhaps the combination with other programs are causing MSE to slow down. It wouldn't the first instance where there's a "clash" between two or more programs.

 

When it started getting slower after each new version my layered security setup hadn't changed, including MSE I had: MBAM (non-resident freeware version), SpywareBlaster, Windows Firewall.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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Tested the new version today. On XP Pro SP3 at least it is still hopelessly slow, and is beyond my level of patience to put up with it, so I'm off to restore the disk image I made before the installation of it.

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I honestly don't know how you've never noticed it being slow on XP machines in particular (sure on Vista, 7, or newer it should be allot faster since those systems are more optimised), people have reported it on software download sites for years being too slow on XP. I've put it on many several XP machines (not just just mine) since it's been available and noticed how slow it scans.

 

One improvement I noticed during the test was less impact of the resident shield/real-time protection since it was no longer locking the use of files/folders for absurd amounts of time, but my test only lasted about 6 hours.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have installed MSE on a Win XP machine today. I have noticed quite a performance hit. But I am wondering if it will be caused by testing MSE on older hardware rather than operating system. All XP machines I have are keeping XP only because they are not powerful enough to run Seven. And all of them are just slow DDR, slow bus, slow one core processor. Has anyone tried MSE on an XP machine but with newer hardware? Maybe the difference lies there.

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I think it's XP OS + Hardware causing the slowness. I remember reading something on Softpedia ages about about it not being optimised for XP. Nowadays not too many AV's run all that smooth on XP, however I know Panda Cloud Antivirus Free runs good on it most of the time with only a hiccup now and then when it's real-time protection is checking the Cloud.

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It's probably a design decision from Microsoft. If I had to guess, I'd say they started making better use of multiple CPU cores, which means when running on older hardware the (already slow) CPU has to do significantly extra work.

I'm Shane.

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I have installed MSE on a Win7 (with 1GB RAM) machine and I think it takes up about 60-70 MB in RAM. I am starting to think that it would be best to install some cloud antivirus on PCs with less than 2 GB RAM. I guess the RAM usage will be around the same for XP.

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From what I remember the resources shown in Task Manager under XP go from the 50's during idle then go into the 100's of MB during scanning. Task Manager however isn't a proper way to determine how much it's actually using. There are of course big name antivirus programs (Norton, etc.,) that use way more resources in the 100's of MB's all the time in XP even when they're just sitting still during idle time with nothing to do.

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I have installed AVAST on a dual-core, 512 MB RAM newly formatted XP system and it became totally irresponsive. Uninstalled it, installed MSE and it was good. I don't really care for all the bloatware in other AV programs nor whether the scan speed is state-of-the-art of not.

 

According to my tests, MSE would eat up about 60-80MB while AVAST was well over 150 MB+

 

Having so little RAM is a PITA; opening FF eats up about 200MB+ RAM with a single tab. This is not good.

 

The bottom line: MSE is not that bad on XP systems even if you are not as protected as with other suites. You get what you pay for.

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The bottom line: MSE is not that bad on XP systems

 

I don't have an issue with it's real-time protection in this current version since it seems like they've did something to make it not make opening folders unresponsive.

 

I know their Quick Scan is doing more now (it was in the previous version too) as it should because it didn't check nearly enough in earlier versions. However overall scan speed when using the Full Scan is a make it or break thing when it comes to AV's, too slow and people will complain and ditch it.

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System setup: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/gcNzIPEjEb0B2khOOBVCHPc

 

A discussion always stimulates the braincells !!!

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I think I first came across that article months ago, via another thread on this forum.

Seems to be just another miscommunicated press release from MS.

 

I like at the start where it states it was once on top.  A very dubious claim at best by the writer.

 

Personally, I've never been a fan but there are plenty who are and still swear by it.  (I'm sure the forum members who use it will chime in and support that)

Backup now & backup often.
It's your digital life - protect it with a backup.
Three things are certain; Birth, Death and loss of data. You control the last.

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I like at the start where it states it was once on top.

 

I don't know how they can claim that, but they don't elaborate with any statistics. However I'm thinking of download numbers only, and if going by that both Avast and AVG would squash it on download quantity alone since they've had free versions for nearly a decade.

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That article was posted in October and part of it was from a previous article posted elsewhere.

 

Some of the comments there were taken out of context and I think Microsoft has moved towards  spending time sharing info and fighting baddies, than winning av contest prizes.

 

Also advising people to switch or at least look at other av's meant the European Monopoly Commission was less likely to fine them as they did in the 'browser choice' fiasco

 

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support@ccleaner.com

 

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Also advising people to switch or at least look at other av's meant the European Monopoly Commission was less likely to fine them as they did in the 'browser choice' fiasco

 

If they had been fined for protection against and removing malware that would've been a slap in the face, regardless of it being included in Win8 as Windows Defender.

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