If you are doing resource intensive work on your computer, a virus scan could negatively affect your computer's performance for that period of time - especially on Windows XP. It is best to set it at a time when you know your PC will be idle - such as when you are sleeping.

You can schedule a specific time that the application runs its scan of the hard disk. Microsoft Security Essentials provides basic protection for your PC without much attention from you. The application accents with green overlays when your PC is protected, yellow overlays when it needs to be updated, and red overlays when it is at risk to infection, due to either an extended time without a hard disk scan, an extended time in which it has not been updated, or a virus has been found on the hard disk.

The menus are simple and covered in blue and white coloring. The interface that Microsoft created for its Microsoft Security Essentials application is one of the cleanest-looking that we have come to see in an antivirus application. The virus definitions are constantly updated so that you have the latest and most prepared protection against offline attacks. It is a basic application that requires very little maintenance. Microsoft Security Essentials is the free antivirus protection application from Microsoft that can serve all of your basic malware, spyware, and adware, protection needs. Select the Download link that corresponds to your version of Windows 7. For the Vista/Windows 7 (32 and 64bit) versions, please visit our security software category. Go to the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 download page on the Microsoft website.

This is the Windows XP version of Microsoft Security Essentials.

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