MSE 2 Final Released!

[sygnus21]

I have a mixed bag of files large and small - Photos I have tiff, large JPEGs, Music, Wave and MP3's. Then there's game files, downloaded files, lots of zip files. etc etc etc.

Scan complete - 4 hours, 15 minutes. Files scanned 5,560,136



It appears I have some Java issues.....



Older version of MSE never picked them up!

 

[Cato]

I'm kinda curious about the Java "finds" by MSSE. I, too, ran a full scan today with version 2 and got 10 "hits" concerning Java. It's been a week since I ran a full scan and didn't get this with the other version, or with Malwarbytes that I run several times a week. Very, very curious.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I updated Java 2 or 3 days ago--there was a new update on Dec 18. That might have some effect on your hits?

I got no hits regarding Java, but can't recall ever getting any.

 

[sygnus21]

Maybe false positive?

Anyway I got rid of them. If Java needs them it'll let me know. Other then those hits the system was clean as I did a quick scan in both areas.

Alls good now. Still don't know what's up with the long scan times though.

BTW I never got any Java hits until this latest MSE update so....

 

[Cato]

Could be false positives, could be I didn't have the lastest Java. For now, I'm just going to run without Java at all unless I find out that I need it more than I thought I did.

 

[fseal]

I didn't get any java hits, but as a general rule for ANY browser but expecially for IE. Turn off active X and Java for the "internet zone". Even turn off all scripting is advisable. IE should never DL them to begin with.

Then for the site where you actually /need/ java, active-X or scripting to run (Like your bank etc), put that site into the "Trusted Zone".

The instructions are different for FF but the idea is exactly the same, no-script on for all sites, exceptions where needed on "trusted" sites.

That'll cut down on the DLing of such things by about a million times Not infinately safe, but almost...

Sure it's a "PITA" to add a site to your trusted sites and the idea that sometimes you'll just have to decline to visit a site because you don't "trust" it is there and it asks for too much of your trust to serve up it's data. But after doing this for a decade or more now I have /never/ contracted any sort of virus or worm...

 

[Anak]

The results of my "Un-Official" Scanning Performance Test of MSE 2.0.657.0 (MSE2) on my system only (see System Specs). For the sake of brevity I have condensed this report into ranges, low to high.
Your mileage will vary...

I preformed a total of eleven (11) scans. Four (4) Quick, Seven (7) Full, and no Custom (0).
I did them in no particular order, some were done in succession, some with time in between. The computer was running for six hours before the testing.
For an explanation to what the various scans cover while they are running, hold your mouse pointer over any selection, and a pop-up will appear with a description.

Note: When you choose Custom then click Scan Now, a selection box will appear. Click on the plus (+) sign, and make your selection of what areas of your HDD/SSD/Removable drives you would like to scan, click OK, and the scan will start. Your choices will hold the next time you use the Custom selection.

Okay, now for the cold hard facts...

The numbers below, taken from the Resource Monitor represent the range of working-set numbers from idle to when MSE first started its scan(s).

MsMpEng.EXE...3802 to 141000k
msseces.EXE.....636k to 7886k
NisSRrv.EXE......264k to 1194k

Scanned Items ranged from 12372 to 985637. The difference between a Quick, and Full scan on my HDD. 1TB with 87.863% free.

Scanning elapsed times for Quick scans were 20 to 28 seconds. For Full 35 to 40 minutes.

There are two places a user can find logs:
Event Viewer\Windows Logs\System . When the list has been generated look for Microsoft Antimalware in the Source Column. There should be two listings close together, one for the scan start, the other for the stop. The stop will list the time elapsed.

And, C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Microsoft Antimalware\Support\ Look for a text document, MPLog-xxxxxxxx-xxxxxx with a recent date.

The only Tray icon activity I had was when MSE2 was downloading updates.
The only balloons were to warn me when I turned off the Real-Time-Protection. They came from the Taskbar\Notification Area.
There were no activity pop-ups.

Some suggestions to shorten scanning:
Use the Custom selection as described above.
Exclude known safe file types, and locations.
Monitor only incoming files in Real-Time-Protection.
Do not limit CPU usage during scan.

At this time there is not a lot of information for MSE2, but I have been keeping my eye on this site:
Microsoft Security Essentials: Getting Started and Upgrading Forum

This is a very informative link by one of our members, tw33k: http://www.sevenforums.com/system-security/72070-whats-best-anti-virus.html

For xxxDanxxx, this link describes how to set-up a scan with Task Manager, don't know if it will be helpful or not: MSE schedule scans

 

[noobvious]

My daily full scan just took about one hour, thirteen minutes, and scanned about 520,000 items. My internal HDD is two partitions, C: 59GB, and D: 537GB.

 

[sygnus21]

Bottom line, there are still long "full" scan times

My test was to see if the long scan times improved from my last experience, about 3 months ago, on my older system, with less hard drive space. The old system is a Q6600 Core quard, with 2gig of memory. Two hard drives - one 500gig & one 320gig. Both hard drives are less the 70 percent full.

The scan results using Beta version 1.xxx was around 3.5 hours. Don't remember the exact time, but I do know it was over 3.5 hours.

As you saw in my earlier post..... http://www.sevenforums.com/system-security/131437-mse-2-final-released-9.html#post1140943 - Scan complete - 4 hours, 15 minutes. Files scanned 5,560,136 This is on my current system, see sys specs, with 10 partitions spanning 3 hard drives.

For the record, when I was using Kaspersky or Norton, doing a full scan with half the system I have now, but averaging the same number of partitions took considerably less time. All scans were at default settings, nothing optimized or excluded. Yeah I know you can speed up scan times by doing customizations, but that goes for anyone of them. Point is MSE is slow on full scanning.

Anyway since I find MSE to be just as effective for what I need in an Anti-Virus program I'll stick with it, long full scan times and all. After all it's free, and works

And again, I'm not the only one who has asked/noticed those long full scan times.

 

[pparks1]

A "daily" full scan. Really???

 

[sygnus21]

My daily full scan just took about one hour, thirteen minutes, and scanned about 520,000 items. My internal HDD is two partitions, C: 59GB, and D: 537GB.

That's still long if you consider this.....

You scanned 520,000 items in an hour 13 minutes

I scanned more than 10 times your number (5,560,136) and did it in 4 hours 15 minutes.

My scan took 4 times as long as yours but avaraged 1,390,034 an hour - more than twice your files in an hour. Now there are other factors that goes into this (size of files), but still....

 

[sygnus21]

A "daily" full scan. Really???

Umm.... No???

I think common sense dictates a daily full scan isn't needed

 

[fseal]

My daily full scan just took about one hour, thirteen minutes, and scanned about 520,000 items. My internal HDD is two partitions, C: 59GB, and D: 537GB.

That's still long if you consider this.....

You scanned 520,000 items in an hour 13 minutes

I scanned more than 10 times your number (5,560,136) and did it in 4 hours 15 minutes.

My scan took 4 times as long as yours but avaraged 1,390,034 an hour - more than twice your files in an hour. Now there are other factors that goes into this (size of files), but still....

This process is really bound by HD speed and CPU speed. Once a portion of a file is loaded for scanning, the CPU speed takes over completely till it's time fo rthe next read. So those of us with fast machines and fast drives will have completely different numberds from other people with slowr drives and or slow computers. In fact I would expect it to be all over the map. The only real comparison /may/ be to compare an eset full scan with an MSE full scan on the same machine but even in that case the depth of the scan and the method of scan may be so different that it's also irrelevant. (And it's possible that a faster scan could be better, would take a LOT of testing to determine anything concrete )

 

[sygnus21]

As I stated, there are other factors involved

And to reiterate, I still like the product, I just think MSE is slow with regards to "full" scans. The numbers bear those out.

 

[Packet]

doesnt seem to have made it over to windows update yet.

is it going to as a 'recommended' upgrade?

 

[sygnus21]

Not sure about all of that. Just download from here - microsoft.com/downloads

 

[ignatzatsonic]

FYI:

I just completed an ESET online complete scan:

284,000 scanned files in 90 minutes.

This compares to yesterday's MSE 2 scan of 887,000 items---also in 90 minutes.

Total space occupied is 1.05 TB across 3 partitions.

C: 24 gigs on a WD black 7200 rpm
D: 339 gigs on the same WD black
E: 682 gigs on a WD green 5400 rpm

I did not knowingly exclude anything from the scans.

Dunno about the discrepancy between 887,000 versus 284,000.

 

[Anak]

Dunno about the discrepancy between 887,000 versus 284,000.

If you had MSE2 set to do a full scan, that's what it does. It scans everything.

Do you know how Eset was configured for your scans, and any of the characteristics of that configuration?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Here is a pic of the config screen with the choices I made.

You will note that the screen says that another antivirus app was detected. If you click the "show list" link, it says Windows Defender (not MSE). I did NOT disable MSE or Defender.

I'm not overly concerned about the discrepancy in the file count, but would like to hear comments nonetheless.

 

[profdlp]

Since one of the biggest complaints about anti-virus programs is their sluggishness and heavy load on the system, many companies skip scanning files deemed not risky. Anak called it with his comment that when you tell MSE to scan everything it scans everything.