On the recommendation of Lifehacker, I installed Avast (on Win7) on my laptop, which had been running MS Security Essentials for the last couple years. For the first couple weeks, I apparently still had MS Security Essentials running as well – I didn’t realize it b/c the icon was not set to display by default on the system tray. I’d kinda expected that the Avast install process would’ve disabled or uninstalled it.
I know I’ve heard that having multiple antivirus programs can cause them to interfere with each other somehow, or degrade performance, but I hadn’t noticed any problems. Is it ever likely to result in any false negatives? Or are there other serious reasons why I should remove MSE? It seems like if they’re not causing serious problems, a “belt and suspenders” approach might not be a terrible idea…
Thanks in advance for pointers / advice / opinions of experts…
I run W7 64bit and it has (had) Windows Defender which I “disabled”…posts here say Defender is OK with Avast but very poor program.
I’ll let others chime in but I think MSE does cause issues/conflicts.
Perhaps there is way to “disable” MSE temporarily until you are good with Avast…when you are then truly uninstall MSE.
To turn off MSE real time protection.
1.> Open Microsoft security essential main window.
2.> Go to Settings> real time protection.
3.> check box (turn on real time protection) > uncheck.
you bet MSE does cause bad conflicts, I had to put my pc in shop, and was all from MSE but do not by all means run 2 anti viruses on your pc one can conflict with the other. ask me how I know this.,from experience mainly and from just knowing what iam doing basically.
Definitely remove MSE. Not only do you risk having conflicts and the 2 of them fighting over a malware, even malware slipping through, but at some point it could seriously mess up your PC which would be hard to resolve if you are not technically capable. When it comes to antivirus then 2 is not better than one…unless you just run a dedicated, special purpose, on-demand scanner.