MS Security Essentials

[Chris Hogg]

I use Win 7, and MS Security Essentials as one of my two anti-malware systems (Malwarebytes being the other). Support for Win7 is ending early next year, and people are being encouraged to switch to Win10, which has anti-malware built in (some adaptation of Win Defender, AIUI). Having had the misfortune to encounter Win 10 in the recent past, and floundered with it, I have no intention of abandoning Win 7 if I can possibly help it).

But does it mean that MS Security Essentials will not be updated either, to keep abreast of fresh malware?

[GB]

Can I ask what problems you had with Win 10?

[Brian Gaff (Sofa)]

We don't know, Have you tried asking them. They took several years to stop supporting, and I'm sure some will be paying for support for 7 as they did with xp, so I'd imagine you might have another year. I'm certainly hanging on to 7, since an update every few months that trashes random software is not my idea of fun. Us blind need to often use older versions of software as they are often accessible unlike the new bright spanking new versions until the writers fix them, but some of us cannot wait with no email or whatever while third party companies faff about.

I'd steer clear of Avast or AVG though as they are bigger viruses than viruses in my view. I had to get Windows reinstalled when Avast removed all accessibility components when I uninstalled it last year. Bah humbug.

Brian

[Martin Brown]

It never was very good at it even when it was maintained. I'm a bit surprised you ran into trouble with Win10 - I found it relatively easy to port most stuff onto Win10 (even though I prefer Win7 myself).

Win8 was a complete dog but that died an unpleasant and quick death.

You might be better off going forward with something paid for like Bitdefender or Kaspersky or PC Magazines recommended 2019 options.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa 2)]

Well now I beg to differ, Msse has stopped quite a bit of nasty stuff here. I do have the free superantispyware which is slightly accessible unlike many of the others you mention, sadly. This is what often happens when different teams of programmers write different bits of the software using different packages. Sigh. When will courses for programmers include an accessibility module? It is not rocket science to design it in but it is awful to add later on. Brian

[Andy Burns]

it honestly isn't that bad, I've had customers who I have already upgraded ask "when is my machine being done?"

Do you have Home, or Pro? If the latter you can pay for extended support units (year1=$50, year2=$100, year3=$200)

Not the best link ...

[Chris Hogg]

I just couldn't get to grips with it. It seemed so totally different to what I was used to. Bear in mind that I'm pretty amateurish when it comes to computer stuff. If I want to change any settings, I usually just stumble around in a sort of random walk until I get what I want, probably leaving a trail of chaos behind me to be revealed at a later date! But W10 seemed beyond me with that approach.

I got it to work up to a point, but I wasn't particularly happy with what I'd got or how it behaved. Too many things appeared unexpectedly, and other things didn't appear when expected. Can't give you any specifics - I just got pissed off with it. I'll continue with W7, and ensure I've got good AV software, kept up-to-date, in the hope of warding off any nasties. It's not as though W7 is new to the market - it's been around for a while, and I imagine most of the holes have been patched, and with luck most of the hackers will be working on W10 now.

[Chris Hogg]

Oh thanks - I might investigate that.

[Martin Brown]

I doubt it is really worthwhile for a domestic user. Making periodic offline backups would be a better investment of time and money.

I am genuinely a bit puzzled that you found Win10 so difficult to get to grips with. OK they have hidden things and tweaked the user interface but it is nowhere near as bad as the deranged Picasso look of Win8.

You can actually make it look close enough to Win7 to fool most people.

BTW My technophobic cousins blundered on with Vista until this time last year without any serious mishaps (long after official support ended).

Peak threat for Win7 will be the year after they discontinue official support when the number of target machines is still very high and routine support is ended. My guess is that if a really nasty critical vulnerability occurred they would still release a patch since otherwise there would be all sorts of places going down spectacularly.

(along the lines of the NHS with Wannacry in 2017)

Patches being available still doesn't mean everyone applies them :(

[GB]

I think you will be taking a hell of a risk by staying with W7. I moved from W7 to W10, and it was dead easy. Lots of non-techie people do it without trouble.

They changed a couple of things, eg Control Panel is called Settings in W10.

[Michael Chare]

I use Windows 10 with the Classic Shell menu which is very much like W7 was. I also use the free Kaspersky for security.

[Dr S Lartius]

How does one get simple borders on all windows?

[invalid]

8<

Control panel has little resemblance to setting.. setting is much easier for the average user to understand. You can still get to control panel in win10 if you want.

I think its changes like this that make more advance win7 user claim win10 is terrible when its actually much better than win7, its also more secure and somewhat more responsive on the same hardware.

I have yet to come across a program that doesn't run on win10 that does run on win7.

[Chris Hogg]

Hmm...thanks for all the comments. Maybe I'll try upgrading in a little while, but I'll have to think seriously about it!

[Vir Campestris]

I've got win10 on the laptop in the house.

I hate it. Every time it comes out of standby it insists on doing an update check _right_ _now_ which as it is a cheap low-powered machine means it is useless for half an hour. Add on the MS tracking stuff...

On my list is a brain transplant for this machine. The motherboard had a sulk a few months back, wouldn't boot Took it all apart and put it back together again, and it's behaved since - but I suspect it was related to being asked to do a long transcode. So I'll ditch this old Core2 and Win7, and put Ubuntu on it - which is what I use at work.

Andy

[Andy Burns]

You may need to specify what you would class as simple, or not simple.

[Chris Hogg]

This may not be what the good Dr wants, but one of the many things that I didn't like on W10 was that the 'sliders' on the edge of the screen would shrink back and only reappeared when the pointer was moved to the screen edge. It annoyed me because their permanent display was an indication that there was more to see on the page offscreen, IYSWIM, but as it was I sometimes missed the offscreen stuff and was wondering why I couldn't see certain features. Is it possible to have them permanently displayed, and if so, how?

[Richard]

Not a Windows 10 user, but:

[Brian Gaff (Sofa)]

Yes and even now with only half hearted support for xp msse I have had no issues with malware there. The current issue with msse on xp is that back in April they released a new update to Msse which actually downloaded and installed two files. Unfortunately this version cannot run on XP, so it only gets one of the files, not the other so the date of the latest virus definition has stayed back in April.

On fiddling about, it seems that one of the files is downloaded, but msse will of course keep prompting since it thinks its not updated.

None of the third party ones sill run on xp, and certainly not if your xp has an AMD processor. I suspect, gradually this situation will occur in windows 7 after the three year extended support stops. I have two 7 machines, this one is pro, but the other is home, and to be honest I am not really sure what the difference is, and why Microsoft would only want extended support on one. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa)]

The thing I'd want to bin is ribbon menu format. I think you can do this but after every major update, it needs applying again. Why with the increasing configurability of the windows shell they do not allow this natively, is utterly stupid. Its far more accessible if they use the old style menus. Works better for keyboard users most certainly. Brian