Windows 8 forum: Is Defender good enough to protect my Windows 8 PC?

randy_rogers38. You should never have more than one anti-virus running. Running multiples creates conflicts in the os not to mention slowing down the computer especially at start up when the conflicting a/v's are battling it out thinking each other is a virus and more. Choose an a/v and use it. You can use other a/v's but you must disable the other first.....Digger

Windows 8 is a virus as far as I am concerned. I tried it and got rid of it. I usaually use AVG Antivirus security software. What is more important is not to go to websites that do illegal activities.

http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparativesreviews/summary-reports/253-summary-report-december-2012 (which I wouldn't call "some stupid little website" finds Kaspersky and Bitdefender the best. Microsoft SE has a top position in the category "no false positives" and nowhere else.

Upon which high-quality research is your opinion based? A link would be helpful.

Kees

I've been using and recommending MSE for several years until 2 months ago. I administrate a basic WordPress website that was hacked twice, forcing me to rebuild it, although not knowing exactly how the attacks had been implemented.
I regulalry downloaded full backups of the website and scanned them with MSE and Malwarebytes anti-malware, neither ever finding problems with backups.
While trying to find an answer to the hack attacks, I came across several posts that implied MSE may be somewhat resources hungry and not as good in identifying Trojans as some claim, so I added AVAST (free edition) to the system, to my suprise it found several known Trojans in the compressed website backup files dating back several months. The imbedded Trojans proved to be the cause of the website failure.
AVAST can be configured to run with MSE and is how it found the Trojans. Had I been alerted to these earlier, I could have prevented those attacks or at least minimized their effects.
That exercise reduced my confidence in MSE and I now use AVAST (paid) without MSE, the removal of the latter was simply to reduce the resources hit on my dated E8400 Win7x64 based system.
As I use my computer for eBay and PayPal, I believe the money well spent for the extra security gained. It also made me realise the importance of secure passwords and not to store them unencripted on my computer!!!

For what it's worth....

I installed Defender on several of my computers and have not encountered any problems.
The reason for getting rid of McAfee and installing Defender was to slim my system down. Everything I had read, led me to believe that Defender was slimmer. My 2 computers that have it, seem to be faster to load.

WOT (Web Of Trust) that will warn you when your going onto a bad site so check that out . The only other protection you really have is YOU! If you go into shady sites no anti-virus can stop you or stop you from downloading infected things...Digger

I've tested McAfee Siteadvisor, Web-Of-Trust, Web Rep, and Comodo's new advisor built into the Dragon(Chrome) browser, and I can attest that WOT is the best - Comodo second - the rest of them are too far behind to even count as a serious contender!

you only knew you were attacked because you saw a result of interaction by MSE/Defender. IF they missed, you'd never know. As I said elsewhere in this thread - I am working on a XP machine that had MSE on it as the anti-virus, and I had to spend considerable time resolving my clients issues. The malware/viruses actually did physical damage to both his optical drives, and they are both junk now. He had over 56 different malicious files invading his PC.

MSE is known all over IT tech forums as a barely good enough solution. If you only go to work sites and never surf the web, you may just get away with it for a while - but don't dare do any online banking or shopping - I guarantee that!!

Windows 8's Defender IS Microsoft Security Essentials. Guessing they decided to brave the wrath of the DOJ and upgraded Defender to include the MSE components.

If you try installing MSE on Windows 8 it will tell you as much.

I own several computers, with several operating systems and while a number of them have windows defender, it, on its own, is NOT enough to protect your computer, This has been proved time and again, when windows defender did NOT recognize anything untoward, yet the anti viral software on the respective machines; AVG, avast, kaspersky, "malwarebytes antimalware" and others pick up on viri that windows defender outright ignores. With that in mind, I would NEVER trust windows defender on its own, the risk of losing valuable data, having personal information compromised, or worse! simply is NOT worth it!
Gaisa

OTOH, I'm not convinced that GaisaSanktejo did advise using multiple AV's simultaneously. (But it did sound like it...)

Anyway, feduchin is correct: not only Microsoft, but all AV companies warn against parallel usage. This is not to promote sales (of a free product???) but simply because they interfere with each other -- and because every action must be examined by all the running AV's, which then compete for access...

One is (usually) good, plural is (always) bad.

Gordon.

Hrm, I guess I did inadvertently make it sound like I used more than one AV program on each computer, but I guess I need to clarify: I own several computers, and some have software pre-installed, like kaspersky for example, whereas, I also maintain my parents computer which has AVG installed, if they have AV software and it seems to be doing its job, I leave it there until it expires, then install something I have a long term licence to use.
So, in reference to your observation and feduchin's question, I do NOT use more than one anti viral program on a computer, that bogs machines down and causes enough conflict to let things slip by.
Gaisa

One virus detector is not sufficient to guarantee a virus free PC. This was supported by an IT forensic specialist at a Vancouver Technology User Group (VANTUG) meeting. I have also experienced that when one virus checker did not detect the virus, the other did. Furthermore, a quick scan detected and removed the virus followed by a full scan that detected 32 parts of the same virus. I imagine the 32 may have been scattered throughout the hard drive that a quick scan did not detect.

This is the first time I experienced this on my PC. My PC was performing strangely so I ran the first virus checker. When no virus was found and the performance did not improve, I ran Malwarebytes in both quick scan and full scan. This solved my problem.

The logic is simple. No two independent software are programmed the same.

As far as two virus detectors are concerned, I have not had a problem with Malwarebytes when run following MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials). I only have MSE monitoring continuously. I run Malwarebytes when I detect a problem with my PC as a confirming backup. I believe it is a good idea to run Malwarebytes from time to time in full scan mode. If the data is critical then it is better to do this regularly. A full scan can take hours depending on the size of the data and speed of the PC.

Absolutely and uses much less resources than Norton or McAfee. I've used Defender and MSSE in all our 42 stores and we have yet to be infected. I do recommend Malwarebytes as a anti malware in addition. Between the two, you are in great shape.

It is industry wide known to work very well with the paid version real time enabled while running one AV solution. I run it all the time with one other active AV, and several active AM solutions, and I have NO performance impact at all. Not one peep from the Event Viewer either!

It continues to slay me that posters keep calling MBAM an anti-virus when even the name says MalwareBytes-Anti-Malware.

The name says it TWICE, but people still don't get it! DOH!