Windows Defender Antivirus ?

The lower right side of the toolbar always seems to have some important messages. I clicked on it & this brought up the Action Center which said “Windows did not find antivirus software on this computer”.

I used to have a third party antivirus program but removed it a few months ago & am now using Windows Defender which I thought was an antivirus program.

The Control Panel says Windows Defender is working & I just did a “Definition Update for Windows Defender Antivirus”.

Why would the Action Center say I do not have an antivirus program?

It does this now and then. I guess Windows ain't too bright sometimes...

Because Windows Defender and MSE are just baseline anti-virus programs and nothing more. If you really want some fairly decent protection you'll install a real anti-virus. I have used and I have installed on my parent's computer Bitdefender Free. It's free so there's that, and I like its pretty decent detection ability. It's also pretty light weight and not full of utter useless crap.

Now I don't run any anti-virus software because I use Sandboxie for my browser, scan ALL downloads at Virus Total, don't browse shady sites, use an AD blocker in my browser (helps protect against malware-laced ADs) and sweep the computer every now and then with a plethora of malware scanners of which many have not even heard of before. My email client is Thunderbird and I have that to only show text for emails and not full HTML parsed emails and of course I NEVER download some strange attachment.

About Sandboxie though. As of this writing they are having some craptacular server issues. So be aware of that in case you or someone else decides to use it.

How to get rid of that Windows nag? Easy. Click on the flag in your task bar | open action center | change action center settings | you can now uncheck or keep all the crap messages you want Windows to tell you about all the damn time. I really hate nagging. LOL

To avoid a possible argument. Here's a citation: https://www.howtogeek.com/173291/goo...rty-antivirus/

The PC in question is a purpose built HTPC. I had Avast free on it but it was frequently updating & giving me messages to buy their premium edition. Since that PC seldom does web browsing I figured why not use Defender. I do have a copy of Norton that can be put on it. But I'm now curious why Defender virus definitions can be updated yet the Action Center says I have no AV installed.

Mike99 said:

The PC in question is a purpose built HTPC.

Then you really don't need an anti-virus unless it uses the Internet.

Mike99 said:

But I'm now curious why Defender virus definitions can be updated yet the Action Center says I have no AV installed.

F22 Simpilot said:

Because Windows Defender and MSE are just baseline anti-virus programs and nothing more.

Do the steps I told you and that message won't pop up.

Is Microsoft Security Essentials for Windows 7 a worthwhile item to use for AV?


It looks like Bitdefender free gets good reviews so I thought about trying that. However a few years ago I tried the paid version & it updated several times a day, which sounds good. But the PC locked up whenever it did the updates & I could not even close out of Windows. This happened 6-10 times a day. Hopefully they've improved over the years.


Does anyone have experience using Security Essentials or Bitdefender free?

axe0 said:

MSE is a worthy AV, but I want to mention that basic security rules apply because regardless of what AV you choose none of them are 100% if you're not careful.

I've been a user of Bitdefender for a couple of years now, Bitdefender has been improved drastically in the time. I experienced the same but haven't had such an issue in years whenever updates are being installed.
I use Bitdefender Total Security 2019, I'm not sure what options Internet Security and Antivirus have, but since a few versions you have the option to get a prompt whenever Bitdefender wants to download and/or install updates (and what kind of updates) and change the frequency for updates.

My personal opinion with Windows 7, I'd opt for Bitdefender because I like it more and find Bitdefender provides more options.

Thanks for the information.

Since this would be used on an HTPC, having it freeze & miss a recording would not good.