I've always just used MSE. Because of this thread I just downloaded Malwarebytes and did a scan with it. Found zero instances of anything shady. I wonder how people get so much malware on their machines? I'm not exactly the most cautious surfer. 

Yup I think I've always used the same porn site.

+1... also you want backup drives not connected to the machine unless backing things up... that one supposedly will encrypt any connected device it can get to.

Yes - including mapped network drives.  Supposedly not UNC drives over the network, just mapped ones, but for companies or multi-pc networks of any sort, it's a huge problem when your data isn't protected.

My audio PC only goes online to receive Windows and driver updates. I use MSE and IO Bit ASC 7 Professional. Good combo IMHO but again I do not surf the web. 

How ironic, guess what happened  to me today!!!

http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?212494-Not-good-enough!!
 
They will probably try to tell me it's a false positive...

FCCfirstclass
Windows 8 has the default Windows Defender.  It replaces MSE as it does both Anti virus and malware.   I have not had any problems in over a year with Win8, now 8.1.

Have to correct this - Defender is NOT the replacement for MSE. It only protects against spyware and is no protection against viruses. MSE is a more complete package which protects against spyware AND viruses.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/s...-windows-defender.aspx

sharke

FCCfirstclass
Windows 8 has the default Windows Defender.  It replaces MSE as it does both Anti virus and malware.   I have not had any problems in over a year with Win8, now 8.1.

Have to correct this - Defender is NOT the replacement for MSE. It only protects against spyware and is no protection against viruses. MSE is a more complete package which protects against spyware AND viruses.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/s...-windows-defender.aspx

Sharke, in Windows 8 it IS the whole package, AV and Spyware/malware. In W7 one had to choose between either Defender or MSE, the system would not allow both. But in W8 they re-added defender bundled with MSE

Teds_Studio
It's kind of ironic that this thread came up.  As I was reading this yesterday...my PC was doing a Windows Update.  One of the updates was....."Malware Software Removal Tool."
 
I had just returned home from going to help a friend try to remove some malware from his computer.  Then got on the forum and read this thread.  Then....see the above update showing in the update window during the update process of my PC.  :)

You mean malicious software removal tool?
Microsoft releases one of those once a month on Windows update, installation is definitely recommended.
Cheers...

I've used most of the free, paid, consumer and enterprise versions of the anti-virus programs mentioned here and others as well. 3 years ago I took a job in IT at a school district who used Kaspersky. I spent MOST of my time the first year fighting viruses that Kaspersky did not prevent. Once I convinced the Systems Administrator to switch to MSE, the frequency of virus related issues has easily dropped by 75% or more, and consistently so over the past 2 years.
 
Depending on who is doing the evaluation, and many other factors, you'll see all sorts of anti-virus software comparisons with different results touted on the web. My personal experience tells me that MSE is at least "good enough," it's free, and not too obtrusive. Besides, you own personal computing habits and common sense are far more effective than any protection software. I do recommend Malwarebytes (also free) for its ability to detect and clean a PC if you do have a virus, although as bitflipper pointed out, much of what it finds isn't always deadly -- still a good effective tool that gets frequent updates.
 
On the rare occasion a nasty virus gets through MSE that isn't so easily removed, there's a point in time of fighting a virus that just isn't worth it anymore and the best option is to re-image the OS drive. I can't stress enough how important is to keep a full system image on another drive along with frequent backups of your user data. Windows 7/8 included backup and restore tools are capable, with more feature rich options available from Acronis, Paragon, and others.

^cool site but none of these tests seem to include things like:
 
1) how to stop uncle Joe from clicking on the nipple on crackhoskanks.com that has a hidden trojan installer
2) teenage son from clicking "yes i would like to download the mega xbox cheat code pack" tha talso has a trojan
3) mom from installing that wonderful casino app that is also a trojan
etc..
 
I realize there is no protection from stupid, but I would like to see which of these holds up best to pure idiocy.  I equate these tests to self defense workshops where you know the guy is coming at you with the knife and the awesome defensive move works so well.