Microsoft Security Essentials

pineapple

Has anyone else had a problem with this?
I don't think there is an option to turn off automatic updates. Anyhow twice recently I have had computer problems immediately after the programme has updated so I have uninstalled it and gone back to Avira.
Maybe it's just me :huh:
Edit: Running Windows XP, Firefox and Sandboxie.

Peter999_2

I use it on 7 PCs and its never caused a problem for me.

System

no problems on my 4 pcs - 1 running xp, 3 on win 7
I think mine is updated manually or updated with windows updates

Lum

Never had a problem with it personally, but all antivirus products suffer from false positives from time to time (I've literally just gotten off an hour-long support session with a customer which turned out to be that Trend Micro OfficeScan was deleting our scanner drivers during our install process)

If Avira is working for you, it's a decent enough AV, carry on using it.

AlecEiffel

I ran it for a few months on Vista with no issue. What were the problems?

Gillor

I wouldn't have thought that Microsoft Security Essentials was causing the problems, but Avira is a better a/v anyway, if it plays ok with your system.

Having said that no signature-based a/v is going to give you complete protection, but as you are using Sandboxie it doesn't really matter which a/v you use; just go for the lightest and least resource hungry, especially with a machine that's maybe a couple of years old running XP.

Panda Cloud Free or Kingsoft Cloud Anti Virus are pretty light and trouble free and combined with Sandboxie will give you a far greater level of protection than a stand-alone a/v.

As long as you scan any item you recover from Sandboxie with something like Malwarebytes before you execute it you are going to be pretty watertight.