MSE not sure if real time protection is working

As the title says really, is my MSE real time protection actually working ?

I ran an exe file on purpose a few days ago knowing it had some mallware / spyware built into it. I did it to test MSE. But nothing happened.

Now a few days later i decide to run a custom scan on my xp partition, my windows 7 partition and a pen drive. These drives had 4 trojans and two java exploits in total, which MSE cleaned.

But how come the real time protection did'nt pick these up ?

Or even doing a quick scan did'nt pick these up either ?

Help, i don't feel safe anymore

First of all, colinw, why in heavens name would you intentionally run an .exe file you know is bad? Personally, I don't consider that a wise move.

As to why the real-time protection didn't catch the install, much depends on your other settings and the permission you provided during the installation. If you have UAC turned off or allowed the UAC elevation prompt during install, you took it upon your own hands to provide the program with permission. It is also possible that what you installed was not in detection at the time of installation but was subsequently added.

Well as i said i wanted to test MSE that's all. I keep hearing how good it is so thought i would test it. My UAC is one notch down from the dafault. But not off.

Anyway i won't be doing it again.

Been running it for several months now and not seen it detect anything, so you begin to wonder if it's working.

hi !

colinw: "Been running it for several months now and not seen it detect anything, so you begin to wonder if it's working."

well, if you don´t get any viruses / malware, what is there for MSE to detect ?

If there's a problem with it, the tray icon will warn you about it. If it doesn't, Windows Security will.

ok thanks guys for the reply's

Its all set to default, so yes all three ticks are on etc.

I will keep an eye on it.

Jacee said:

Click on the 'settings' tab, then click on 'real time protection'. Are all three boxes checked?

Jacee:

Are you implying that real time virus protection is contingent on scans, scheduled or otherwise?

Well just a quick update, i don't know whats going here but my usb pen drive had a hidden autorun.inf and svchost.exe file, I done a scan of the pen drive and MSE found nothing wrong.

Then took MSE off and went back to Nod32 which i was running before anyway. And as soon as plugged my pen drive in Nod32 detected these files and deleted them straight away.

So for what ever reason i can't see the MSE realtime working at all ?

I was hoping to stay with MSE but something is wrong.

My settings are all fine, they are just default.

To me it's as though there is no background scanning going on at all.

Weird.