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Microsoft Security Essentials verdict...

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saint:
I've been using only the Microsoft Security Essentials as my anti-malware for the past few months. In that time I've been hit with three virus infections. Two of them were the "you're infected, buy this antivirus program to fix it" virus and one was a nasty bootkit that hijacked Google/Bing/Yahoo search results and would redirect you to various nefarious sites. I don't install many things from the Internet and never from an untrusted site or without a virus scan. I do click links fairly freely from Reddit.com and from images.google.com, and suspect those have been the vector of infection each time. The last one was so nasty I had to use:

A restore to a previous restore point
Malware Bytes
Spybot
HiJack This
Spyware Doctor
Lavasoft AdAware
(and a few others, including of course Microsoft Security Essentials)

all of which found a few minor suspicious things, but it wasn't until I used Hitman that I finally found and got rid of the bootkit. Being a bootkit, it of course re-infected my system each time I rebooted.

Nasty thing, affected all my browsers (Firefox, Chrome, and IE). Took me forever to track down and clean. Still thinking of a format/reload.

Anyway, verdict on Microsoft Security Essentials is close, but no cigar. Not recommended at this time. I will now be using a combination of Malware Bytes (paid), Spybot, and Hitman on my machine.

J_K_M_A_N:
How do you think it compares to free versions of Avast or AVG? I have been using the Microsoft version for other people because it comes free with Windows 7 and I was thinking it would be a little better than some free versions of anti virus software but maybe not. Any ideas on that comparison? (I use a paid version of Avast myself)

J_K_M_A_N

newmanfamilyvlogs:
Thanks for the heads up on Hitman. I'll have to look at that one.

saint:

--- Quote from: pinballjim on September 15, 2011, 02:13:26 pm ---So the verdict is that the free software works pretty well but not perfectly, so we should pay for a suite of bloatware that combined kinda work?



--- End quote ---

Meh, take from it what you want. I gave MSE a good run and it didn't meet the need.

wp34:
Aren't those more malware than viruses?  I don't think MSE covers malware anyway.

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