AV strategies for Win 7 Afterlife-MSE or 3rd Party?

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Had a question regarding MSE (Miscrosquish Security Essentials) in the Win 7 Afterlife, which as you can see from my signature line, is the shadow world I’m hanging out in:

A when 7 was being dropped from support, MSFT said they would still be issuing definitions regularly (which seems to be once a day, not a stellar interval, IMHO) for MSE At that time or a bit before it, Susan made the observation that OEM AV products, or at least the AV that came with the OS you have, would be perfectly sufficient, and that 3rd party AV’s sometimes caused problems.

Now, however, since MSFT announced that it will no longer be “updating the engine” I’ve been wondering if I shouldn’t get a third- party AV…Avira or Eset, something like that. (Eset updates their defs several times a day.)

(No updates to the product, but still supplying defs…Hmmmm!…sounds like a CYA operation, mebbe.)

I DO run a current Malwarebytes sweep weekly to see if that catches anything MSE may have missed, though.

Ideas?

TIA!

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Greenhorn
--
"...all the people, all the time..."Peter Ustinov ad-lib in "Logan's Run"

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Your computer may only be updating the MSE virus definitions once a day, but the MSE virus definitions are updated by MS several times a day and seem to be updated as often as, and in sync with, Windows Defender on W 8.1. I don’t know what happens with Defender on W 10 or 11 (don’t use them).

I keep 2 W7 computers updated with MSE virus definitions. It’s not unusual for me to manually update them a handful of times in a day.

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks, SueW

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When I had W7 I also added 0patch pro.  They offer micro patches. I also used AdwCleaner offered by Malwarebytes.

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[Bob99]

…when 7 was being dropped from support, MSFT said they would still be issuing definitions regularly (which seems to be once a day, not a stellar interval, IMHO)…

I’m on Windows 10, where the same application is called Microsoft Defender (or Windows Defender by some), and signature updates for the product, (which share the same versioning with MSE’s signature updates, I believe) are released about four times a day at somewhat irregular intervals. However, for us to get them at that interval, in many cases we need to use the built-in update checker (manually check for updates) from within Defender to look for updates and install them.

Product updates, which can include newer versions of the engine and antimalware client, seem to happen about once a month from what I’ve seen on my machine. For you, that last thing is only for comparison since, as you’ve stated, MSE isn’t getting any product updates on Win 7, only signature updates (see below).

EDIT: I found some info about the exact future of MSE. Per the page on MS’s site at the link below,

…Microsoft will continue to release signature updates (including engine) to service systems currently running Microsoft Security Essentials untill (sic) 2023.

I added the bolding above in the quote and the “sic” note, as that’s how the word is misspelled on their page. So, apparently I wasn’t completely correct in the paragraph above. My sincere apologies. OK, here’s the exact page for the quote above: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/what-is-microsoft-security-essentials-c25ad47a-7d15-8072-1438-b07dffcbbb20. The page includes just a couple of FAQ’s that answer typical end of life questions about MSE, so be sure to read the items below the initial grey box that says that support for MSE ended on January 14, 2020.

As an FYI, several folks who are regular visitors here have had success using BitDefender Free. Problem is, that product’s being discontinued by the end of next month!  🙁  So, my suggestion would be to check out AV Comparatives to see which suites or stand-alone products catch your eye and offer a free version or low-cost paid version for Windows 7.

One recommendation that I can make is to stay away from AVG’s Free versions…there are many complaints floating around their own forums about the Free edition being nothing more than an ad machine with (as stated in several complaints on their boards) an excessive amount of pop-ups touting one of their paid products or versions. Some of these pop-ups have allegedly interrupted gameplay for some folks. When I had Windows 7, I had the Free version of AVG, and it had the pop-ups that occurred somewhat unpredictably. In the Free version, there’s no way to completely eliminate them, only to reduce their frequency. When I made the leap to Windows 10 and a new computer last year, AVG didn’t make the trip, and I’ve been quite happy using Defender that’s built into Windows 10 since then.

The list of anti-crapware products that support Windows 7 is bound to dwindle in the coming few years since Win 7 will be EOL for consumers and small businesses in just over a year from now, January 10th or 11th of 2023, I believe. At that point, the only folks getting any kind of support from MS for Win 7 will probably be very large enterprise customers with deep pockets for a tailored support package.

I sincerely hope this helps you make a fully informed decision about your next move for an anti-crapware solution, given that we now know that all support for MSE will end in 2023.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by Bob99.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by Bob99. Reason: Added info from MS about MSE's future support ending in 2023

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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Hey, thanks a heap for all that footwork!!

MSFT had said earlier that they’d be supporting definitions, but not engine/”product” updates. (Typical MSFT, issues a statement, then does a 120 degree course correction, and then hides that correction under a barrel.)

I’ll hang on to it until 2022 expires. After that I hope to be 100% Linus Mint….and we all live in Hope. 🙂

Best of the New Year to you!

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Greenhorn
--
"...all the people, all the time..."Peter Ustinov ad-lib in "Logan's Run"

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W7 was my daily driver until it’s original EOL a couple years ago. I still keep the browsers and MSE up to date, pretty much, well, just because.

But after the W7 EOL I switched to Linux Mint 19.2 Cinnamon as my daily driver. It’s great. Rock solid, easy to learn, updates go in with absolutely no drama. The hardest part – although not all that hard, really – is installation and from your signature line it seems you’ve already done that.

I’ve had one problem, a kernel update that caused my computer to crash at random. But the machine was never bricked and I could boot up and simply revert back to the previous kernel. A new kernel was offered after they fixed it. I installed it and was right back to a rock solid computer.

Looking back, I wish I had made the transition to Mint sooner. Would have saved me a lot of frustration and 5 hour long blue screen updates (on a completely stock relatively new Dell Inspiron with Opera and Firefox as the only third party software – so not much excuse for that kind of update nonsense).

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@NTDBD, the definitions for Microsoft antimalware products are available for download at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/defenderupdates (for Windows 7, you’ll probably want to bookmark the Microsoft Security Essentials 64-bit link).

I’ve posted a few more useful details about getting the latest engine (point 2) and the latest definitions (point 3) here and here (update on point 3).

Hope it helps. 😉

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