Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 (Morro MSE Free Anti-Virus)

I too had to uninstall PC Tools Firewall Plus as it was hanging on boot up with MSE installed. I've now given up on the MSE beta and reinstalled PC Tools Firewall Plus because I got fed up with having to update MSE definitions manually. Automatic Updates has never worked on my XP Pro system since upgrading to SP3. I've tried re-registering wups2.dll, etc, but nothing I've tried so far has got Automatic Updates to work again.

I use Returnil with protection enabled most of the time and have the RVS Protection Scheduler set to automatically reboot the system into an unprotected state overnight for scheduled updating of the real system. I am not interested in any antivirus solution that cannot be made to work this way. With MSE, due to the Automatic Updates feature not working, I was having to manually reboot the PC in order to apply MSE definition updates to the real system.

In any case, Automatic Updates, even when working, can only be scheduled to run once a day. MSE really needs its own automatic update mechanism that would go online at regular intervals and search for definition updates. Hopefully, this will be in the final version as MSE does look quite promising.

 

According to discussions in the MSE forums MSE apparently does update itself 1 to 3 times per day automatically, irrespective of AU settings. It does apparently use (at minimum) BITS to perform downloads. So there is dependency to underlying services used by AU apparently.

In case this link works, one discussion about topic.
In case this one works too, another topic.

Anyone experiencing issues with update process should report/validate these bugs via Connect Dashboard (you are beta testers, right? )

 

For all you people misunderstanding about MSE and Microsoft/Windows Update (MU/WU), the reality is that MSE uses the MU/WU "pipes", but is independent of your MU/WU settings. It doesn't matter whether you have them set to automatic or not. The only requirement is that you do not disable the MU/WU services (the wuauserv service and the BITS service) - those services need to be running for MSE updates to occur.

This said, there is a bug in MSE's update procedures on Windows XP: MS are aware of the bug and will fix it in due course. Remember MSE is a beta product and, like any beta, you need to understand it will not be of release quality and will be subject to issues you would not expect to encounter with a released product. You use it at your own risk.

 

This, I don't understand the one making harsh final decisions on a beta product.

 

Huh? Who is making "harsh final decisions" on a beta product?

 

Here..

...and here...

Is that enough quoting? >.>

 

Ah, understood. You actually directed your post at me, so I presumed you were claiming I was pre-judging MSE.

Yes, there are too many people who don't understand the nature of beta products and jump to premature/incorrect/unreasonable conclusions.

 

Aye. You are supposed to find flaws in it, put it under stress and see how it works, test under different conditions etc. In other words, see if you can break it somehow (or if it breaks something else ...)

Also, usability, GUI issues etc. are also part of normal feedback during betas

 

Yet, MSE is one of the most stable products I've ever tested, so far.

Other final releases are buggier than MSE beta. And, when I mean bugs, I mean those that cause BSOD, crashes, unstability, and other damages.

My opinion, Microsoft did a great job releasing a very stable beta version.

 

Thanks IceCube1010.

I've tried this and it works. This solves the problem that I was having scheduling definition updates to take place overnight when Returnil protection is disabled. I've now reinstalled the MSE beta and, apart from being a little heavy on memory usage (around 65MB), it's running fine.

@acr1965:

I discovered that the conflict with PC Tools Firewall Plus on my system occurred when the firewall ESV (Enhanced Security Verification) HIPS feature was enabled. With ESV disabled the conflict disappeared. It's too early to say for sure but it does appear that it may be possible to run PC Tools Firewall Plus alongside MSE without a problem providing ESV is turned off in the firewall.

 

Could you point the Microsoft web site?

Thank you

 

Quite true, and apart from the updating business which I'm sure will be fixed (although I should add that it is updating manually, so security is not compromised), I'm very happy with it, it has no impact in terms of speed, and even on demand scans are very fast.

 

This is not the Microsoft web site, but it does contain a very clear explanation of the command line utility. I had no trouble following the instructions to create a batch file, which I was then able to set up as a scheduled task using the Windows Task Scheduler.

http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-...ials-using-the-mpcmdrun-command-line-utility/

 

thanks pegr. Yes, it is a little heavy on the ram but I think the utility is worth it.
Ice

 

Agreed.

 

Windows 7 and now this - Microsoft has been releasing beta code that is good enough for release by many other vendors. Both are excellent products and work great together.

 

Well said. Good information.

 

I have XP SP 3 and I have my MS Update set to notify me of updates and I installed Microsoft Security Essentials today with original virus and spyware definitions download 1.61.549.0 and it has since auto updated to 1.61.563.0. So that is working. I did have the program screen freeze but I clicked the task bar icon to open again, it did and I closed it and the frozen screen closed too. Guess there are some "Quirks" to be expected with a Beta. Hopefully that will get fixed soon. All in all though; looks pretty good.

 

Maybe its just me, but it slows down my system to a crawl.
When realtime detection is enabled, and I open ANY folder, Vista start refreshing the folder content (the green progressbar at the top of the window), which takes ages when the folder contains a lot of data.
And that happen every time I open a folder. When disabling the realtime protection, all is back to normal. Hope this is just a beta issue...

Another issue I had:
I selected a custom scan, and checked only harddrive D: which has about 650000 files all in all.
After more than 2 hours, MSE was still scanning harddrive D: and the counter was already at 1.5mio. files, the progressbar of MSE was just at about 20%.

 

Anything is possible with a beta, as there have been no complaints about slowdowns, it could be conflicting with some other application. Do you have any other real time guard enabled? Uninstalling another AV might have left something behind. Some people had issues with firewalls with HIPS modules, I'm running it on Vista64, and the speed is unaffected, even faster than Avira (my paid AV).

 

No slowdowns here as well. That has something to do with the amount of ram that the AV uses. I've tried all the other free AV and I find this one the lightest on cpu but the heaviest on ram. I just wish MS comes out with a patch to fix the updating issue on my XP pro machine. In the job scheduler, I needed to setup a update call.

Ice

 

They can use all the RAM they want when it means lower CPU usage. Especially considering we're drawing closer to win7, 64bit computing, and >4GB RAM standards. Hell I'm seeing cheapo laptops these days with 4GB RAM standards.

 

Even CPU Time?

 

I installed it on an old rig we have on the bench in the office, that I used for the Win7 RC. It was an old old Dell Optiplex GX280, with an old HyperThread Pentium 4 2.8GHz, and only 2 gigs of RAM. After installing MSE, didn't detect much of a loss in any performance.

Looks like MS hit another home run with this product. Going to be a good year for MS Products.....the upcoming version of MS Office will also have a free ad supported version.

 

there is a bug in the program with xp and some vista machines doing automatic updates. My xp pro sp3 machine has missed so far 4 definition updates.
If you look at the beta forum for MSE you will see so many users having this exact problem.

this really needs to be fixed asap

robin