I thought MS Security Essentials was all inclusive. Was I mislead?

Hi

Its likely yoru HP Advisor is wrong as MSE is an antivirus application, its not a Firewall tho as the Windows built in one covers that.

MSE will take the place of AVG and Windows Defender takes the place of Spybot or Adaware, if you have it installed, dont know your Windows version so cannot say for certain, but Vista and Win7 come with Defender, XP you need to install it for antimalware.

But I would have MSE installed and then install Spywareblaster and Malwarebytes (Malwarebytes as a 2nd opinion malware scanner only). I have this setup on my two laptops and works well.

The Windows Firewall is good ion Vista and Windows 7 but some do like a 3rd party Firewall in say PCTools etc but I've not found the need, especially if you safe surf and download, which is the main issue with security, if you P2P alot and surf unsafe site sthen your open to malware (even with the best security apps installed).

In the end its the HP advisor thats likely wrong, look for an update or dump it, as the in built Windows Security Center shoudl tell you if you are not covered, so check it, in Control Panel.

 

Hi Floyd

Cheers for the update, some 3rd party apps are sadly not as upto date as others and especially Windows, so can at times not register the latest apps, thus think your unprotected, this is one reason to always keep as many apps and your Windows fully upto date and current.

As a side thought Secunia PSI (its free BTW) is a good app for allowing you to know what apps are out of date and have an update, its not 100% foolproof but covers the major apps, just a good way to make sure your PC is as upto date as possible and in turn making its as secure as possible as many 3rd party apps as Adobe etc do have security flaws that are patched from time to time.