Used by 7670 people for 668 hours, 34 minutes and 40 seconds
Windows Defender is a free program that helps protect your computer against pop-ups, slow performance, and security threats caused by spyware and other unwanted software. GIANT AntiSpyware was a spyware detection and removal application developed by GIANT Company Software, Inc. and acquired by Microsoft Corporation in 2004. GIANT AntiSpyware was … More Edit
Popularity over the last 30 days (?)
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| Website: | microsoft.com/windows/... |
| License: | Free |
| Version: | 6.1.7000.0 |
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Screenshots
MSASCui.exe
Scans may be long, but they can run efficiently in the background (unlike Sophos, which must have a window open to scan) It takes up very little memory, and I have only ever had one problem with it, stated below
Mine is refusing to run due to failed updates due to a faulty registry key that I can't delete... (lack of admin FTL)
I tried this on XP and it's OK but performance seems to be even better on Vista. You don't even realize that it's running.
I feel much safe if I have a lot of anti-malware applications, but it's really interesting - once a month I scan my computer with all programs which I have installed, but Windows Defender (only this app!) never found any spyware or something (hmmm). I don't know: I always have the newest virus database, but even if I scan system with defender first (before Ad-Aware and AviraAntivir) it didn't found anything. Scans are very long and In my opinion it's unnecessary program.
Hideous.
Doesn't do much, but does its job.
Don't even notice it. It complements my AV's antispyware with no drain on performance.
Very Good
Works fine on my vista pc
Hmm. Well, the icon's nice, anyway.
Somewhat difficult to rate it's performance, as I've never needed it. Seems to run fine, though.
had some problems with adware so I started running this, though I was pretty sure it wouldn't do much of anything. While it was running I did some research, and decided to try malwarebytes. I downloaded that program, and started running it along with defender, and not only did defender not find any infected files while malwarebytes found many, but it took twice as long to scan!
It's not totally useless, I've had it catch things before, but there are better choices out there.
It just works aslong as you dont load a shizload of crappy AV suites onto your computer.
is it me or does this just sit there and do nothing other than updateupdateupdate
Sometimes annoying but I love notifications for whatever happens underground, I feel good when I can have my own confirmations :)
Yes, I haven't noticed any action (only updates).