Well I have switched from MSE back to NOD32

[+Warwagon MVC]

I REALLY wanted to like Microsoft Security Essentials, I really did. In my mind it had a bunch of issues. One of which was the seemingly large CPU usage. It always seemed as if the Security Essentials process was always chugging a large amount of CPU. Which is why I never recommended it be installed on an older machine. At least not one without more than 1 core and a lot of ram.

Scanning speeds always seemed ok to me. Though this is in comparison to Malwarebytes which isn't saying very much. I always found them about the same speed wise.

It also seemed to chug on average of 80 megs of ram. Now on my i7 920 with 6 gigs of ram I never really felt any slow down. On older machines it was much more apparent.

The final straw was when I logged into my server yesterday that I Have sitting on the floor next to me. I thought I would install securnia. Once it installed it scanned my computer. Then it just hung at 60%. So after about 5 mins I checked the task manger. Sure enough there was security essentials chugging 100% cpu. So I killed the process and the securnia promptly finished.

I have sense bought a 2 year license with nod32, everything seems to be working much better.

Also I saw some online videos reviews between nod32 and MSE

It went pretty much like this.

If nod32 detected an infected file it would pop up next to the clock saying "This file has been quarantined"

With the same file on MSE, a box would appear asking what you want to do with the file. If you click apply action or clean you would wait about 1-2 mins while the program was thinking about god knows what, and then it would finally complete.

Any way that is my mini story.

[Raa]

Thanks for the heads up mate, I wasn't sure which way to go with this. I'll keep selling NOD32 to my customers now. (Y)

[Wakers]

Just had a look at WSE on my task manager - it's using 2.5mb.

That and the system has been quicker than it was when I was using Avira Anti-vir.

I dunno what you were doing with it - maybe you had automatic scans set weirdly?

[Mike Frett]

Wakers is it mssexes.exe? Click show "Processes from all users" and check MsMpEng.exe....51MB here. MsMpEng is the culprit ;)

[episode]

MSE has been incredibly great on all the systems I've put it on. I haven't seen the memory and CPU usage you have mentioned.

[Wakers]

Ah ha. Using 41mb.

Still not to bad, and no worse than Avira imo, that was using about the same, spread out over three processes iirc. This is on x64 too so I'd expect it to be a little high.

[+Warwagon MVC]

Ah ha. Using 41mb.

Still not to bad, and no worse than Avira imo, that was using about the same, spread out over three processes iirc. This is on x64 too so I'd expect it to be a little high.

Just for fun I installed Avira on a machine and OMG the Ad. Yes I know you can hack the ad off ,but OMG the ad. BARF!.

[M.F.D.K]

I don't know about you mate, but I can easily say I have installed MSE on 18 computers and none of them are showing any signs of MSE hogging down the system. The lowest system i installed MSE on is a Pentium III 550mhz i think and 256MB, there was no slow down what so ever.

[+Warwagon MVC]

The lowest system i installed MSE on is a Pentium III 550mhz i think and 256MB

Oh sweet Jesus

[M.F.D.K]

Oh sweet Jesus

Mate, this family refuses to upgrade to anything higher than that :laugh: . They say it gets the job done, they mainly use it for surfing.

[Lee G. Veteran]

I have MSE installed on a P4 2.8 laptop with 512MB RAM running Windows XP. I've just checked, and it's using about 50MB. It doesn't really slow the laptop down. IIRC, the laptop didn't run any faster before I installed MSE back in June.

But, I agree NOD32 is far superior. I bought a 3 year subscription back in March, and I have been very impressed with it. Nonetheless, I have to say MSE is a great free antivirus solution.

[Huleboeren]

Just for fun I installed Avira on a machine and OMG the Ad. Yes I know you can hack the ad off ,but OMG the ad. BARF!.

Not to mention the huge update definitions windows

[darkmanx21]

That sucks dude..I've switched all my PC's to MSE and it works fine. No one ever complained or even noticed a difference. I haven't dealt with too many machines that had a Pentium 3 but I got a machine with a low end Pentium 4..still works great!

[Pharos]

MSE isn't bad, but using it on 5 computers, I noticed all of them slowed down considerably in general, but especially when lauching apps. MSE in my opinion felt exactly like Norton, you can definitely feel the anti virus is there, running. I switched them all to Avira and they regained all the performance back. I swear it doesn't feel like there's an AV installed. None of the people using the computers mind the popup, either, and it only shows up once a day anyway.

[Shadrack]

When it comes to free protection, I think MSE is the best I've come across. AVG Home use to be decent but is now very sluggish and the ads are annoying. All the free ones I think have ads or at least nag screens to upgrade to their pay-for editions.

What I want is an antivirus that responds when a virus is found, deletes the virus and then puts a big message on my screen that says something along the lines us: "Threat Eliminated! Your system is now 100% virus free!"

Seems like whenever a virus is found you can delete the file or put it in a virus vault...but there is never a definitive "you are no longer infected" message to give me a nice warm feeling. I'm always left feeling paranoid.

[svnO.o]

MSE seems to work fine for me. I just have it do quick scans once a week at a time I'm not usually up. I don't notice it slowing down anything on my system. It also never bothers me it's almost like it doesn't exist. I do manual full scans from time to time and run MalwareBytes once in awhile as well and haven't had any viruses/problems.

Guess it just comes down to preference/hardware.

[+bomberh Subscriber²]

I am using MSE on 5 computers, 2 of them being netbooks and I haven?t seen anything that would make me change MSE to anything else. It does what it should, I have no slowdowns and I am happy with it.

[+Warwagon MVC]

Mate, this family refuses to upgrade to anything higher than that :laugh: . They say it gets the job done, they mainly use it for surfing.

Actually I the sweet Jesus was the fact you have MSE running on that.

[Buzz99]

NOD32 is great av. But MSE is free and it does a decent job. No system slowdown here. It takes 7 816 kb idle here on xp 32bit. Fast scan used at most 90 000 Kb. I won't say that's a "slow poke". I am very happy with MSE and best of all... FREE.

[Spyder Veteran]

In my mind it had a bunch of issues.

definately only in your mind

[+Warwagon MVC]

Has anyone here watched the CPU usage of MSE

[lalalawawawa]

It takes only 3.6 mb on my system (Windows 7 x64). I also have NOD32 running and so far I haven't experienced any slowdowns caused by running these two.

[sc302 Veteran]

I ran mse recently on a computer that was pretty infected. It picked up 2 files. I don't think it works, google searches were still redirecting after the scan. Combofix and running cleanup! seemed to have taken care of the issue.

Hmm good ole reliable 1, MSE 0.

[dead.cell]

Microsoft Security Essentials has worked great for me so far. In the computer hardware labs where students learn to take apart and build computers, the college has a wide variety of hardware, everything from years old "junk" to our newer iCore 7 machines. Of course, before MSE, students had the option of installing either AVG or Avira, but lately, AVG's definitions haven't been all too great. On top of that, and with personal experience, AVG is seemingly more of a resource hog compared to Avira. Now, Avira's downsides have always been that STUPID popup ad, which I could deal with. Their update servers hanging constantly or moving at crawling speeds though certainly did not impress me more recently.

Since then, MSE has been the ideal choice, mostly because it takes relatively no time to install, there's no stupid toolbars or options that are going to bite you in the ass later, it feels very light, and the usability is surely there.

Now, that said, I was really curious on how it did with actual virus detections and such. Yesterday though, my friend brought his external in to the lab to scan for viruses. Great place to do it too, since infecting one of the lab machines isn't really an issue since we can wipe the OS. Anyhow, he claimed AVG didn't pick up anything the previous night, and had installed Avira without knowing that MSE was already on the lab computer. After updating Avira and everything though, there was nothing found on the drive. I came to help him out, and noticed that MSE had a red flag up down in the corner. Apparently, it had already detected a problem with the drive, finding some sort of Autorun virus or whatever on the drive.

MSE removed it without issue of course, and a full scan afterwards came back clean. No more issues or anything. :)

Now, while this certainly doesn't mean MSE is the best or anything just because it picked up one thing the others didn't, it is certainly reassuring, especially having seen it first hand. (Y)

As more to the topic though, I've never had an issue on any of the old machines, nor the new with MSE. Even my grandmother's old Compaq runs it fine.

[JustGeorge]

The lowest machine I've installed MSE on is a Celery 1.4Ghz and 512MB of RAM. It did slow the machine down a bit, but it was still usable. Even with the slowdown, I'd still install it over AVG, Avira, and Avast. Why you ask?

AVG - LOL

Avira - Stupid Ad and sometimes has problems with false positives

Avast - Its actually ok, but I don't really understand the need for a new free key once per year. I get sick of trying to explain to people how to get a new key only to say eff it and go do it for them.

I'm running the current MSE Beta (1743) and so far, not alot has changed in MSE yet. They need to seriously improve the full scan time along with the CPU usage as Warwagon mentioned. Kaspersky used to be my AV of choice, but got tired of its stupid little quirks and the little problems it caused here and there with basic OS operation.