Do you have a new computer and have no clue how to secure it? Or is it that your current antivirus is about to expire and you have no money to buy a new license? Microsoft has released a free antivirus that is very light on the system and is surprisingly better than bought versions of other antivirus software. Microsoft Security Essentials is a free download and is available for all Genuine Windows operating systems that are newer than Windows XP. It runs on your computer without using much of your performance and doesn’t disturb you like most other antivirus software will. Its installation is 10 minutes and performs a quick scan on the spot which takes between 10 and 15 minutes.
This software will work on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 on the condition that it is genuine. To download Security Essentials and experience free and silent protection that you can feel comfortable about, you can download and install the security suite directly from Microsoft at: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/. Remember to always save downloading files and scan them before using them – regardless of where they are from. If you want to see how this software will protect and impress you, read on in this full featured review and tutorial.
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Silent Security That is Dependable

Overview

Microsoft Security Essentials has a very simple interface and is extremely easy to use. To perform a scan, open the program and all of the options are on the first page. A quick scan will quickly scan the most targeted areas on your computer for viruses in under 20 minutes. The full scan will scan your entire system and any externally connected drives or devices. The custom scan will ask you to choose the folders to scan and proceed with the same steps as the full scan. Microsoft Security Essentials can also perform updates before scheduled scans and will use Windows Update to update its data base and kernel.
To update or upgrade the program manually, you simply go to the update tab and click update. This software also blocks pages and downloads that are infected with malware from proceeding. However, one must always use caution when browsing the web regardless of their antivirus and use intelligence when making a decision upon proceeding. All of the malware that is cleaned off your computer will be stored in the History tab. This includes all prevented intrusions from malware from the web.This part of the program will also explain to you what the virus does and how dangerous it is.
Microsoft Security Essentials is easily programmable to scan and update and perform many other tasks at your demand. While it doesn’t have that convenient maintenance tool that its predecessor One Care had which fine tuned your computer by cleaning the hard drive and fixing errors, Windows already provides these tools and it wouldn't be surprising if One Care’s maintenance window was just a fancy display making it look like it’s using its own tools when it was using the ones that were already installed in windows in reality.
Security Essentials will perform actions automatically upon finding a virus. It will tell you that there is a virus and prompt you to click Clean Computer where it will clean the computer automatically. Microsoft is automatically set to remove any viruses but if you want to override that decision, you can make those changes in the Default Actions section.
Real-time Protection is a very handy part of Security Essentials. On first glance, it may seem that this software is a rip off in comparison to other antivirus software but this built in feature is very powerful and has been a life saver on several occasions. Microsoft Security Essentials is so silent in its actions that some may even wonder if it works but it does. Note that disabling the Real-Time Protection feature will make Security Essentials go from Protected to not protected and it will prompt you to click “Start Now” which will reactivate the Real-Time Protection Feature.For optimal performance, make sure that the Real-Time Protection feature is enabled along as its tasks being to Monitor activity and scan all downloaded files for this is the engine that blocks the majority of the viruses before they are detected in the full system scan.
Security essentials can even exclude file locations and types to speed up the process of scans. Although, its current scan engine will not even be noticed on the system specifications and your computer doesn’t lag while it scans.
While this is a very basic security program that is meant to replace Windows Defender which was an anti-spyware program built into Windows Vista and released for Windows XP, it adds very important coverage on the front of defense. You can have this program scan all removable drives, scan all compressed media and even create a system restore point at each scan which is handy if ever your computer gets corrupted by another task. For instance, if you were one of the ones that saw a beta version of a program that has been leaked and got curious, eventually, you would find that its limited functionality was frustrating and that its uninstaller was non-existent. in the end, the old version wouldn’t install properly due to registry errors and you would be forced to clean the registry which is never a good idea. So, Windows System Restore is the place to go. Once started, it will take approximately half an hour to take your computer back to that virus scan that occurred just before your curiosity peaked.
Microsoft even has a security community called SpyNet where you can join and aid them in the fight against viruses. Based on what I have seen, this engine is a success. Microsoft Security Essentials has detected things that my previous Norton and Avast anti-virus software didn’t even detect. Unlike Avast, there are no false positives since Security Essentials is intelligent enough to figure out what a windows system file is, and if it didn’t this product would be a complete failure.
Another great feature in Security Essentials is the right-click scan. You can right-click any file or folder on your computer and the scan option will be available. This is great for inspecting the files that you recently downloaded for viruses and malware. At the end of the scan, you will receive a scan report as shown in the second image. The scan was so fast that a screen capture of the scanning was impossible.

Security Essentials will even work in a weaker environment. A virtual machine in Microsoft Virtual Machine 2007 has a Pentium 3 processor at 1mhz per second and in this case, a ram of about 800MB. Unless the use hardware virtualization option is on, there is no graphics in the machine which is especially noticeable in Windows Vista and Windows 7 where AREO absolutely needs a graphics card to have full functionality. However, if a weak virtual machine can scan a 15mb file in less than a second, on a good computer, the performance is phenomenal.
If you don’t run a scan in a while because the automatic scan cannot take place due to the computer never being on, you will get a message.

Upon clicking scan now, you will see the standard scanning screen as it checks your system for unwanted malware.

If a virus is detected during the scan, as in the case of this dummy test virtual machine, it will display an advisory at the bottom of the scan. In this shot, we can see that a scan of the full Windows 7 virtual machine build will be scanned in under 15 minutes on a virtual machine. The hard drive in this machine is 15 GB where only 12 GB is used. On a 250GB hard drive with the full processor speed, the time to scan is roughly 11 minutes.
Once the scan is finished, you will be prompted to clean the computer.
If you click Show Details, you will see this Window.
It seems that Keygens are a good source of Malware, that virus on the desktop was easily detected and will be easily removed.You can click show details for a description and recommended procedure of action. Unless, you have plans for this virus, click clean computer.

You could just as easily have clicked clean computer -  the big button – but I always like to know what the virus was.
You will see that your computer is safe when this window appears. Microsoft easily and quickly dealt with the problem.

Now that the computer is clean, here is the scan report.

Real-Time Protection – Stay Safe While Doing Nothing About It; You’re Covered

To test Real-Time Protection, several emails have been circulating on Facebook about videos and photos that don’t exist. We know that they are viruses, but will Security Essentials respond?
I entered the bit.ly link and now i get this phony video page from lincolnval.com and in a matter of a second, it is blocked.
Here is Security Essentials telling me how dangerous it is… Note that no siren was used and no sound was made.
Hit Clean Computer and Microsoft does its work… It is wise to close the web site.

The computer is now clean again.
So, Microsoft Security Essentials is sure to impress as it protects you against threats that other security software claim to but don’t. For future reference, as with my previous post, don’t trust links that have been shortened. Lincolnval is no video sharing site.
This software will work on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 on the condition that it is genuine. To download Security Essentials and experience free and silent protection that you can feel comfortable about, you can download and install the security suite directly from Microsoft at: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/. Remember to always save downloading files and scan them before using them – regardless of where they are from.
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