Windows Defender as AntiVirus 2018

[JamesJwepple]

Posted in year 2018
just installed spybot v.2.6 and for some reason it put windows defender on my Vista 32bit computer. First question how is defender working on my system (it is updating)? thought it no longer supported. 2nd question, Since windows defender has "real time" protection can I use it as my main antivirus? current one slows my computer down.
Thanks!

 

[townsbg]

Windows defender is integrated into Vista and later versions of Windows however it is NOT a full anti-malware engine until Windows 8.

 

[Vistaar]

just installed spybot v.2.6 and for some reason it put windows defender on my Vista 32bit computer. First question how is defender working on my system (it is updating)? thought it no longer supported. 2nd question, Since windows defender has "real time" protection can I use it as my main antivirus?

Welcome to Vista Forums JamesJwepple. The last version of Spybot to support Vista was 2.4 (see Spybot 2.5 Compatibility). They advise you to use v.2.4 "for now," but that link was posted in July 2015, which is not what I would call "now" anymore. I suggest that you get rid of Spybot.

As townsbg has pointed out, the old Windows Defender antispyware was an integral part of Vista and Windows 7, i.e. you always had it and cannot uninstall it, although installing a third-party antivirus typically turns Defender off. Yes, Defender still works and receives definition updates (unlike Microsoft Security Essentials, which no longer supports Vista unfortunately), but Defender isn't an antivirus.

 

[JamesJwepple]

thanks. for a better av should i try moon secure antivirus? apparently still works on vista 32 bit. thanks again

n.b. i down graded back to spybot 1.6, 2.4 is buggy on mine, 1.6 working well for me so far

 

[Vistaar]

for a better av should i try moon secure antivirus? apparently still works on vista 32 bit.

I never heard of it. The most popular antivirus for Vista is Avast.

 

[JamesJwepple]

Is there anywhere in this forum that posts a list of free av's that are vista 32bit sp2 friendly?
thanks again all. May 2018
Yep, avast I took off, but having same problem, so back to spybot 1.6 and probably back to avast, right where i was before (I think i have a hardware issue, different discussion area i know).

 

[townsbg]

This thread contains a list of AVS software and their support status however it is over a year old with one update last month. Not all are free though. Vista No Longer Supported by Some Security Software

This forum isn't updated so frequently and I'm not even sure how many "regulars" here even run Vista exclusively as their primary machine. I know that many as myself have moved to 7 and others have moved to 10. IMO you would be much better off if you upgraded to 7. You can still buy a legal copy from Newegg however the only copies that they offer cannot be transferred to another computer. No other website that I know of can be trusted to provide you will a copy that hasn't either been pirated or has a copy that hasn't be used. I trust Newegg enough to recommend it. Windows 7, 8 and 10 Home and Professional - Newegg.com

 

[Vistaar]

Is there anywhere in this forum that posts a list of free av's that are vista 32bit sp2 friendly?

No, but as townsbg pointed out, I have tried to maintain a list of security software that is unfriendly to Vista (and Spybot is listed). The first post has been edited multiple times to add more products to the list, in fact as recently as yesterday. Frequent editing would be even more critical if someone tried to maintain a list of security products that do support Vista, since support is temporary whereas "end of support" tends to be permanent; and readers might even expect you to actually test all those dreadful third-party products on an old Vista PC that you prefer to keep offline because browser support is already as bad as AV support is going to be in another year.

When Vista was new, AVG was a good choice; but by 2014 I had grown to despise AVG. I suppose it might have improved after Avast bought the company - but if that sounds likely to you, what's so bad about Avast? I used Panda Free for a short time more than three years ago, and would never recommend it to anyone. If you had asked me back in 2016, I would've recommended Microsoft Security Essentials. Since you seem to have no qualms about relying on extremely old versions, I'll mention that Security Essentials 4.4 still works on Vista and XP (see Microsoft Security Essentials begins to nag on January 10). When you say Avast slows down your computer, do you mean it slows down your browser? Nearly every AV except Security Essentials slows down Firefox by increasing its memory footprint. (I sometimes wonder if Google pays AV companies to slow down Chrome's competition.) Firefox ESR 52 will soon be unsupported anyway (see Update on Firefox support for Windows XP and Vista – Future Releases).

 

[townsbg]

No, but as townsbg pointed out, I have tried to maintain a list of security software that is unfriendly to Vista (and Spybot is listed). The first post has been edited multiple times to add more products to the list, in fact as recently as yesterday. Frequent editing would be even more critical if someone tried to maintain a list of security products that do support Vista, since support is temporary whereas "end of support" tends to be permanent; and readers might even expect you to actually test all those dreadful third-party products on an old Vista PC that you prefer to keep offline because browser support is already as bad as AV support is going to be in another year.

The problem with that is that you have to find someone with that old of a computer still running Vista (preferably one that Vista originally came on) AND is willing to pay for all of those products in order to test them. A virtual machine likely won't count since the tester is probably on a newer computer than when Vista came out with and as such is significantly more powerful. That would also apply to me. I can give my Vista VM as little as a gig of ram and one core on my processor and it will still run better than it did on the desktop I built and ran it on as my primary system because the processor is so much more powerful (even though it is a 2010 model). It would run circles around my old desktop. Because of that I can't adequately test for slowness issues like I would if it was an older system. Users with such old systems compared to modern hardware are going to have problems running modern software especially if they have modern systems to compare to due to the hardware limitations and will end up complaining that their computer is slow. I couldn't imagine going back to that desktop I had and running it as my primary computer. Take for example Firefox which now uses have a gig of memory and at least one core. That's a lot of resources for such old equipment. If I remember right that it is basic reasoning behind Mozilla discontinuing support for Firefox (although I might be wrong). On top of that not only is Vista no longer receiving system patches from M$ but at it's peak it never was as heavily used as XP or 7. So how many people are still actually running Vista? According to Net MarketShare Vista usage is less than .5% and has less users than any desktop version of Windows from XP to 10. With such a limited market it's no wonder that software developers are pushing away from Vista. There's next no demand and therefore no incentive to pay the software manufacturers to continue developing and testing their software to run on Vista.

As for myself if I was still running vista as my primary OS I wouldn't get nervous about running an antiquated version of any antivirus software as long as it is still receiving definition updates. Once those stop the software becomes next to useless because it can't detect never viruses.

 

[JamesJwepple]

May 2018, put avg on, pasted from avg (really avast i know) website "Compatible with Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, XP SP3" (hope "compatible" means they're updating definitions for my os!) and yeah i know avg and avast are owned by the same company, but supposedly still operate as seperate entities(not sure if this is true). my comp was crashing hourly and after putting avg on it has stopped crashing (it did a chkdsk/f) not sure if coincidence or avg helped , thought i had a power problem but 11 yr old hd has some cracks . I also use nougat and kitkat (also antiquated), win 7 and 10. but I like my antiquated vista every now and then. as for vm'ing maybe one day i'll start that.

 

[Vistaar]

...after putting avg on it has stopped crashing...

Sounds good. I would be interested in hearing more about your experiences using AVG on Vista in 2018. I haven't used AVG since 2014, so there's no real point in writing about technical problems that may have been solved years ago; but is AVG Free still "the mother of all nagware"?