- Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus 259,648
- AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 5,957,615
- ThreatFire Free 142,445
- Norton AntiVirus 2012 92,882
- Microsoft Security Essentials 250,782
Microsoft Security Essentials
- Version: 2.1
- Downloads Count: 250,782
- License Type: Free
- Price: Free
- Date Added: Apr 29, 2012
- Operating Systems: Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows Vista
- Requirements: 32- or 64-bit OS
- Author: Microsoft
Most recent User Reviews for Microsoft Security Essentials
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Reviewed by: jdl50cc
Duration of ownership: 1 Years
Strengths: Does its job, does not interfere with my network and browser, or add advertising to my emails, unlike AVG Anti-Virus.
Weaknesses: None that I can see, although it doesn't do as well in some reviews. It's never letter a anything attack my PC, however, so its perceived weaknesses may be more hypothetical than actual.
Overall Evaluation: Everyone likes to dump on Microsoft, but this replaced my Norton Anti-Virus very nicely, and at zero cost. What's not to like?
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Reviewed by: MyComputerGirl
Duration of ownership: 0 Months
Strengths: Free
Weaknesses: It doesn't work well
Overall Evaluation: I have spent more time removing malware/viruses and replacing this program than ANY OTHER. I have had it cause email programs to not receive emails and cause hang ups and I have more reported infections on these machines than any other. They are too basic and don't protect you enough, but hey, you get what you pay for.
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Reviewed by: cadmsee
Duration of ownership: 0 Months
Strengths:
Weaknesses: My MSE allowed a virus into my computer and when I decided to trash it, I could not remove the software. I got a mesasage that it could not be removed because some file was missing so I should update it. But when I tried to download the software I received a message that it was already on my computer and I can only have one copy on my computer. I bought a new computer.
Overall Evaluation: I think it sucks!
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Reviewed by: milekim
Duration of ownership: 1 Years
Strengths: The effectiveness and ease of use.
Weaknesses: none
Overall Evaluation: MSE is great, I have tried Kaspersky, AVG and ESET on the same pc but performance fell and can't remove some viruses. after I installed MSE, it detected virus, malware and etc that those 3 did not and I removed all effectively. PC Performance is doubled. Now I use it on my 10 pc without any problems. I recom MSE for its effectiveness in detection, removal and performance. All my pc's are running on XP Pro SP3 and I got no problem installing it.
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Reviewed by: DaveCunningham1867
Duration of ownership: 1 Days
Strengths: Couldn't find ANY!!!
Weaknesses: I only found one...It wiped everything out of a very large database and deleted ALL my photographs from an external 1.5 Tb drive. I wasn't game to try anything else!!!!
Overall Evaluation: I got such a scare when I lost my database and photographs (fortunately backed up elsewhere) that I wouldn't go anywhere near this product. I'm going back to AVAST! For BaliRob1...I am running XP Professional with SP3. I'd be very interested in your comments on my findings.
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Reviewed by: jrrobert
Duration of ownership: 2 Years
Strengths: It is doing clean-up on the "FLY" Pop-up window will appear to inform you about virus attack.
Weaknesses: As a Free software it is "Superior"I could not find any.
Overall Evaluation: I use MSE on Win 7, installed this program after using other free programs for years and it found out that I had 7 viruses embedded in programs which other security programs did not report. I will never use anything else.
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Reviewed by: BaliRob1
Duration of ownership: 0 Months
Strengths: N/A
Weaknesses: Will not work with Winows XP SP3 or other well-known and respected anti-virus programs
Overall Evaluation: I wanted to use MSE and did try but it turned my pc into a pantomime
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Reviewed by: MichaelSullivan6zig
Duration of ownership: 7 Months
Strengths: It blocks ads, prevents malware from infecting my pc, alerts me to online dangers.
Weaknesses: It doesn't remove malware or undesirable software, it simply alerts you to it's existence.
Overall Evaluation: It's a good program if U just want to know what malware is on you're system, not so good if you intend to remove said malware.
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Reviewed by: Nerdie
Duration of ownership: 0 Months
Strengths: Worked fine for months until I installed Windows Service Pak 3
Weaknesses: After installing Service Pak 3, MSE would not work at all. Uninstalled it and then could not reinstall. Had to use another product for protection and it detected numerous infections.
Overall Evaluation: Microsoft help team could not solve my issues with MSE. Would not recommend.
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Reviewed by: m11andrade
Duration of ownership: 6 Months
Strengths: Very easy to use.
Weaknesses:
Overall Evaluation: Love how easy this is to use.
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Reviewed by: DrTompkins
Duration of ownership: 10 Months
Strengths: It has a minimal impact on computer resources.
Weaknesses: It only catches items in its virus definitions. NOT supported for Server 2003 at this time!
Overall Evaluation: Very good for the price
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Reviewed by: nhboomer
Duration of ownership: 2 Days
Strengths: probably protects well
Weaknesses: Was using Avira but had update problems so wanted to switch. Before uninstalling it, I transferred about 700 MB of data from a flash drive to my hard drive. It took 55 sec to do. Uninstalled Avira and did the same transfer. It took 45 sec. Installed MSE and did the same data transfer. It took 4 min (not sec)! I couldn't believe the slowness. Got rid of MSE and tried Avast. The same data transfer took 2 min. I can live with that. At least Avast is updating as it should. I could not tolerate the slowness of MSE on my brand new and peppy laptop.
Overall Evaluation: improve scan speed and monitoring speed and it could be good
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Reviewed by: RaviDixit
Duration of ownership: 8 Months
Strengths: perfect in all aspects. An utopian type for the users who wat security as 'Set it and forget it'
Weaknesses: None so far.
Overall Evaluation: good start from Microsoft. keep going!
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Reviewed by: brainpup
Duration of ownership: 5 Months
Strengths: Found & deleted a Trojan/Virus that My Paid version of Trend Micro Internet Security Suite (while using the newest Version with updated AV signatures) couldn't find, as neither could Panda's or McAfee's Antivirus scanners. Works great with Windows 7, its free, not much of a RAM hit, easy to schedule scans, interface is easy to navigate and it scans for Spyware too.
Weaknesses: Full scans take a while on my 500GB WD HDD but Quick Scans are only about 15 minutes. (NOTE: my surfing speed doesn't drop off much at all during a scheduled scan) Doesn't play well with Malwarebyte's Antimalware program or Lavasoft's Zone Alarm Firewall so use SUPERAntispyware & MS's Windows Firewall.
Overall Evaluation: Very good program that I'd say the only real flaw is that the Full scans do take longer than most other AV's, BUTT, I tend to contribute that to the fact that the scans are so thorough, plus its doing an AV scan & an Antispyware scan. I just schedule mine to run on a time at night when I'm watching my favorite TV show or I know I'll be out late that night. I'm very happy to see that Microsoft finally decided to get serious about protecting its own Operating System. Currently I use WSE, Windows Firewall, Windows Defender,Superantispyware and CCleaner while surfing in the "Internet Badlands" ( i.e. Pornsites, Peer to Peer downloads, Facebook, etc. etc. ) and my set of protection has kept me up and running fast with no problems for the past 5 months, while using AVG, AVAST & Trend Micro's Security Suite I got slammed by Virus', Trojan's and Spyware all the time.
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Reviewed by: fredhetrick
Duration of ownership: 1 Days
Strengths: The scans are very thorough.
Weaknesses: It takes 5 hours to do a full scan.
Overall Evaluation: The scans take far too long.
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Reviewed by: dennisgerman
Duration of ownership: 6 Months
Strengths: Works quietly in the background. Several times it has blocked Trojans.
Weaknesses: NONE
Overall Evaluation: This is a great prduct. I used to use Norton but switched too this program when I upgraded to Windows 7.
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Reviewed by: jeffreolson
Duration of ownership: 2 Weeks
Strengths: seamlessly works into windows security programs. Takes over what defender was doing in windows.Defender will automatically be turned off. This is normal since MSE has a better Malware detector built into it (AT least that's Microsofts position).
Weaknesses: I had installed threatfire along with MSE as was suggested by PC Worlds review.DON'T DO IT. They are not compatable. I worked with the Microsoft help site to discover this issue. If you have threatfire installed already you will need their removal tool to get rid of it. It's not enough to just uninstall.(Vista OS)
Overall Evaluation: So far so good. Recently there was a virus that MSE and Sun Systems AV were the only 2 AV that detected it. Hoping the MSE alone will handle all the malware potential problems.
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Reviewed by: sunday2313
Duration of ownership: 2 Days
Strengths: everything
Weaknesses: nothing
Overall Evaluation: i love it as soon as i installed it a few minutes later it detected 2 worms and got rid of them im impressed
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Reviewed by: Ibrad09
Duration of ownership: 2 Months
Strengths: Everything
Weaknesses: nothing
Overall Evaluation: Highly Impressed
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Reviewed by: wobblyo
Duration of ownership: 1 Days
Strengths: It's free, especially when BT's own McAfee is not Win 7 compatible yet.
Weaknesses: Not a total solution.
Overall Evaluation: OK so far!
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Reviewed by: MLStrand56
Duration of ownership: 1 Days
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Overall Evaluation: Can Anybody explain what 1GHz of RAM is?
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Reviewed by: stvjh
Duration of ownership: 1 Months
Strengths: Small footprint. Is not a ram hog like McAfee
Weaknesses: None so far.
Overall Evaluation: Have had no problems with it. matter of fact I just installed it on my laptop also.
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