Thread: Anti-virus on Windows 8.1

Microsoft Security Essentials/Defender is good.
its all i use now days.


having a backup of important things is more important.

Windows defender is pretty good now days.

I run Sophos as I can access it through work, good solid product. But I'm not sure if they sell a consumer version.

Should something slip past, Dave has some great advice here: http://www.aulro.com/afvb/computers/...procedure.html

Originally Posted by Eevo

Microsoft Security Essentials/Defender is good.
its all i use now days.


having a backup of important things is more important.

MSE on Windows 8? W8 uses a beefed up defender that, while running in the background, doesn't offer the functionality of a dedicated anti-malware program. In some ways its the worst part of upgrading.

I've used AVG (free version) and have recently moved to the subscription version of malware bytes. Telstra claimed I had a virus, which I did not believe, but on the off chance they were right I moved anti-malware. I was right, they were wrong, so AVG was doing its job.

I'd consider running diminished log on privileges as well. Make all your users normal users (not administrators) and have an admin log on for installing software or making system changes. Sure the UAC (user access control) offers similar protection, but sometimes people click yes without reading the dialog box or understanding what they are doing.

Yeah - I use AVG (free version) too, and so far have not had any issues with viruses. Have got it running on 4 Win 8.1 machines.

There might be better out there, but I've never come to grief with AVG, so I stick with it.

you guys talking up avg are the best thing ever for computer mobs that do virus cleanups...

i currently rate it at junk status myself, mainly because 80%+ of systems that i have come in from new clients for clean ups, come in with it installed.

MSE is much better, much lighter and with very few exceptions, much better at cleaning up any mess, generally speaking

do i rate it as sufficient if your using torrents and other out of the ordinary tasks, no, but it is better than most of the freebies by quite some distance...

OK - that is interesting. I will have to take another look at MSE then.

In the early days, anything to do with Microsoft and Viruses was a joke, so I've stayed away from it.

Am guessing I have to uninstall AVG to "install" MSE, or does MSE come as an inbuilt part of Win8.1?

mse is called defender in 8.1

if you uninstall avg..

after reboot go to the action center and make sure antivirus and anti malware support is turned on

do my cleanup like mark pointed out

see where you end up.

I've just uninstalled AVG and am installing MSE on a test Win7 PC to see how it goes... if it's all OK I'll try it out on my main Win8.1 machine.