Microsoft Security Essentials

It's essential to have an antivirus application installed on your computer, especially due to the large number of complex threats which arise every day. The problem is that most antivirus programs which are free lack some options and don't offer the strong protection you need. Fortunately, there is an application which is different, as it offers strong and robust antivirus protection and it also features some really useful features. The name of the application is Microsoft Security Essentials.

This antivirus program for Windows offers protection against even the newest and most complex virus threats. During the installation process, the user is asked if he wants to perform a quick scan after this process is complete. It's a good idea to do so, as you will be able to neutralize all virus threats immediately after the program has been installed.

After the first scan is complete, Microsoft Security Essentials will start updating itself and will download new virus definition files, so to be able to protect your computer against the newest viruses. After the update process is complete, the program will display the status of the system protection in the main tab of its interface.To be able to better understand this status, the application uses different colors. From the main tab, you can also initiate a new scanning task, by choosing one of the three available scanning tasks, quick, full or custom. The custom scan type allows you to manually select the folders, files or partitions that should be scanned for viruses.

During scanning, the user is able to view some real time information about this process, like the total number of files already scanned, start time and elapsed time. When a suspicious file is found, it is automatically placed in a safe quarantine, where it cannot do any harm. In order for the user to view all the files stored in the quarantine, he can just access the History tab. Here, besides quarantined items, one can also view all the files which were deleted by the program and also the items which are never scanned.

From the settings area of the application, the user can configure Security Essentials to automatically scan the computer for viruses in a scheduled mode. What's more, he can configure the program to limit the CPU usage to 50% during scanning, which is useful, especially if there are numerous resource-demanding applications running at the time of the scan. From the settings section, the user can also configure the actions that the program should take whenever an infected file is found. One can also enable or disable the real-time protection. Keeping it enabled will allow the program to automatically analyze files while they are accessed. Even if you download archived files from the Internet, Security Essential is able to automatically scan files inside these archives, without you having to unpack them first.