Microsoft Security Essentials Review: Completely Free Security Software from Microsoft

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) can only be installed if you have Windows XP with SP2 or SP3, Vista and Windows 7 systems

Installing MSE is straightforward by accepting the EULA then validating Windows. Since the product is offering real-time anti-virus and other malware protection, you need to uninstall the other antivirus program to avoid conflict.

The program will check for updates and offer to scan the system after installation. No reboot is required so you can start configuring MSE and use the protection.

The key feature of MSE is to protect the system against threats using its on-access and on-demand scanner and removal. MSE will detect spyware, virus, worm, Trojans, potentially unwanted programs and other type of malware. It does not include firewall protection because Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 have built-in firewall already.

You can opt to scan using Full, Quick or Custom scan. The program can be configured to scan removable drives (flash, USB drives) and archives. Another option in MSE is the exclusions of folder, file types, processes and drive. You can right-click a file, folder or drive for MSE to scan or use the schedule scan option in the program.

Like Windows Defender, MSE also includes Microsoft Spynet that will send to Microsoft Research Team the suspicious files or detected items that requires analysis. Allowing the program to send the files to research center will help in protecting not only your computers but all end-users of MSE and Windows Defender.

It’s not required to turn on Automatic Updates (AU) in Windows to get the updates to MSE. You can continue to use “Notify you for updates” in AU. If you prefer to turn off AU, you should configure MSE to run a scheduled scan (quick scanning for example) and choose to check for updates before the scan. This means if you have daily scheduled scan, you have scheduled too the daily checking and download of detection updates for MSE.

The Update tab has “update” button that will connect to Microsoft Update servers. Other method is to update isby downloading the daily updates from Microsoft website. You can also download the update via Windows Update website. Watch the Microsoft Malware Protection Portal pages also for links in downloading the definitions for MSE or MSAM: Microsoft Malware Protection Portal

Update: The new build of Microsoft Security Essentials v1.0.1611.0 will now automatically update its definitions without the need to turn on Automatic Update feature in Windows.

MSE is light to use while you are scanning or when the product is running. I run a test for the detection capability of MSE: Out of 201 samples, MSE detected 153 items. Not bad detection by MSE - the excellent NOD32 detected only a handful more items (165).

It's free and effective. What more can I say?