Well, I’ve been using the Microsoft product ever since it was a private beta. I liked it, because it was smooth and light on my computer. Today is occurred to me. How secure is actually is.
So I looked up for some tests and came across The “Firewall Leakage Tester” a small but really useful utility for people asking the same question I’m asking.
It simple just click the “Test my firewall” button. Your firewall then should notify you that some software is attempting to connect to a remote server. Should I let it? oddly enough MSSE didn’t even mention any activity. Which means not doing what you’re NOT paying it to do. So I decided to try another freeware firewall. ZoneAlarm was the first to occur to me, I didn’t know if there was a free edition. But there actually is one, it’s called “ZoneAlarm Basic Firewall”. There also is an all you can eat “Internet security suite” at the same page.
I wasn’t really eager to use ZoneAlarm because I knew it consumed a lot of memory. But to be honest the last time I used ZoneAlarm I had a Pentium II running Windows 98. Things change in a decade you know.
I downloaded and installed ZoneAlarm and BOOM. I spent the past I think 8 hours just trying to get my Windows 7 RC to work. At first I thought it was ZA so I manually deleted the files from my Ubuntu (dual booting is a bless) the tried deleting the registry keys (through a batch file on startup) which worked but not as well as you’d think.
I restarted into Windows and it kept crashing. So I tried to beat the System and DID (Ladies & Gentlemen I AM faster than a Core2 Duo 2.33Ghz 2MB Cache) Not from the first trial of course. So at startup I tried as fast as I could to start the task manager and kill the msmp…Something process and it’s subtree. I noticed that the computer didn’t crash. So I tried Removing and reinstalling Microsoft Security Essentials But again my computer froze. So I tried again several times to beat the system (Again) this time I removed it and tried reinstalling ZA.
Things went smoothly even after trying to reboot for several times.
Oh, noooooooooow that I got ZoneAlarm to work I tried running the same utility again. But luckily ZA did ask me if I allow this software to open a connection.. Imagine if it didn’t, I’ve done would have been a waste of my Useless Thursday.
Conclusion (I’ve seen a couple of bloggers do this):
Microsoft Security Essentials Didn’t really work for me, but ZoneAlarm did 🙂