Free Anti-Virus: How to Install Microsoft Security Essentials (With Video)

Mike

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If you have an anti-virus solution like Avast!, or even if you have no anti-virus solution, you may want to consider installing Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is a free anti-virus solution provided by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.

Security Essentials is the derivative of the Microsoft OneCare product which was previously a commercial product, and is no longer available for use.

What we are going to do right now to download Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is to actually go to our search engine of choice here, and type in: Microsoft Security Essentials

Having a free anti-virus solution from Microsoft is not a bad thing whatsoever.

And of course now we have the Microsoft site coming up first. We check the URL to make sure its legit. Of course, it is, and we can now access the site at any time via this URL at any time:

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials

And we can go to "Download Now". Automatically, the download will pick up on what operating system you're using, and which version of Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) you need. If you're using Internet Explorer, you don't need to save the installation file.

You can just click on "Run".

And what we'll do here now is agree with our User Account Control warning, and we shall close the browser.
Now we're at the installation phase, and what we do here is go to next obviously. Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) will enable Microsoft Update by default. It will hopefully make it safer to browse the Internet. We will click accept (EULA). And we will validate our copy of Windows.

And we click on Install.

Now, if you have any other anti-virus software such as AVG, McAfee, or Norton, you want to remove these before you do this installation.

And now we will scan the computer for potential threats immediately. What MSE will do first is search for updates: definition updates which it requires. Until then, it will tell you that your computer is at risk.

Once the definitions are finished downloading, it will do an initial quick scan, and while that scan is going on, you can go in and customize the settings to your liking. One of the things we will do, is join you to Microsoft SpyNet.

Microsoft SpyNet Advanced Service is a service that helps Microsoft isolate viruses in a more detailed manner. Your information is still kept secure, but what happens is that it is prone to detect viruses a little bit easier. So we shall go through that step here now, and as you can see the scan is on-going.

We'll check out Settings here and you'll see all the options available to you.

Thanks for watching this video tutorial, and you can see the options here: You can change all of the file types, file changes, exclude processes, and when you actually go down to Microsoft SpyNet, you can change to Advanced Membership, and there you have it.

Thanks for watching this video, and visit Windows 7 Forums.




Highlights from this presentation:
  • Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is a free product and is a good competitor to other free anti-virus solutions.
  • Be sure to uninstall other anti-virus solutions before installing Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE).
  • Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) installation is quick, easy, fast, and customizable.
  • Consider joining the Advanced Microsoft SpyNet service to get the most from Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE).
 
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