Microsoft Security Essentials | The Coffeehouse

Bass
www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/

So how is the system resources consumption of this thing?

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On my netbook (which has been booted for a while), MsMpEng.exe (the on-access scanning engine) is using about 132 MB and msseces.exe (the UI) is using about 4.5 MB.

CPU usage during on-access scanning is negligible; there's no noticable performance impact versus running with no AV (this is on a 1.6 GHz Atom, which is hyperthreaded but not dual-core).

(edit: report VM size instead of Mem Usage)

LeoDavidson

In reply to Bass

#Oct 1st @ 9:19 AM

So far my low-powered HTPC is still snappy with it running. As with all A/V it's easy to measure the downside and hard to measure the upside, but so far there doesn't seem to be any downside.

It's just what I needed for my HTPC, really. We occasionally use YouTube or similar sites on it so it's nice to have some protection against drive-by threats from hijacked websites, or video files that exploit codec bugs (god knows there's enough bugs in video codecs if anyone wanted to exploit them), but it has to be low-impact, as the machine isn't super-fast (and I don't want to wait to watch TV!), and low-cost/free as I don't consider the machine to at risk enough to pay for protection. MSE seems ideal.

I'm sticking with NOD32 on my desktop and laptop, though. Might re-evaluate things when my subscription runs out.

contextfree

In reply to RLO

#Sep 30th @ 11:56 AM

Yeah, my friend at McAfee says the same thing: their consumer products aren't actually responsible for that much of their revenues.

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

In reply to LeoDavidson

#Oct 1st @ 9:16 AM

Thanks man, got 'em.

So how is the system resources consumption of this thing?

MsMpEng.exe runs at 57.858kB and msseces.exe at 2.740kB for me. Data like that is meaningless, though. What matters is how much you notice it, and I'm not noticing any slowdowns and have yet to have it bug me about anything, unlike other free AV suites.

andokai

I've had to uninstall it as it was causing my laptop to blue screen repeatedly with "multiple irp complete requests". I'm on a Mac running bootcamp and MacDrive and suspect it was that as it isn't the most stable piece of driver software I've ever seen. On the other hand perhaps it just thinks that OS X on the other partition is too big a virus for it to handle. Smiley

Dr Herbie
Horses for courses

In reply to andokai

#Oct 2nd @ 5:25 AM

I have uninstalled after finding that IE took 10 seconds or so to show a new tab (even a blank tab). For me, that was just too annoying to put up with. No other faults, though.

Herbie

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

In reply to Dr Herbie

#Oct 2nd @ 5:45 AM

Hmm, I notice no difference in IE performance with or without MSSE.

Dr Herbie
Horses for courses

In reply to Sven Groot

#Oct 2nd @ 6:58 AM

I thought it was kind of weird, but the msmpeng.exe process would jump to 30% of total processor time whenever a new tab was created. It's only a problem on my work XP machine, I didn't notice any amiss at home on Vista, but I'll double check when I get back this evening.

Herbie

ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

In reply to Dr Herbie

#Oct 2nd @ 5:45 AM

That's really odd. I haven't had that.

Are you on 32 or 64 bit Vista? (I'm on 32)

Dr Herbie
Horses for courses

In reply to ManipUni

#Oct 2nd @ 7:19 AM

I'm 32-bit Vista at home (didn't notice any IE problems, but will double-check later), and 32-bit XP at work (noticed problems).

Herbie

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

In reply to Dr Herbie

#Oct 2nd @ 7:44 AM

I had the same problem years ago with OneCare, and the MS support folks couldn't figure it out so I dropped it in favor of trend micro.

Of course, now, IE8 tabs take forever to open anyway.

Dr Herbie
Horses for courses

In reply to ScanIAm

#Oct 2nd @ 7:53 AM

Well I can categorically say that there are no problems of any kind on my home machine -- 32bit Vista.

I'll wait until I get another lull at work (ha!) and try installing again and living with it for a few days, but if it still takes 10 seconds to open an IE tab, that's just not good enough.

Herbie

spivonious

For those of you reporting slow IE tab opening on XP, it might be caused by a hosts file that is too big. Strange problem, yes, but once I removed all the entries Spybot had put in the hosts file, new tabs open up lickety-split.

joechung

I like MSE! In case any of you are curious how MSE works when it detects a virus, visit http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm for a file with a well-known test anti-virus signature.