Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 Released

Microsoft today (quietly) released Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0. I'm scrambling to figure out what's changed, as Microsoft provide no heads-up at all that this was coming. And you may recall that very late in the beta the company removed a key feature of the product and it's unclear if that's gone for good or whether it's been put back.

Anyway. The official description:

Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free* download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple.

Microsoft Security Essentials runs quietly and efficiently in the background so you’re free to use your Windows-based PC the way you want—without interruptions or long computer wait times.

*Your PC must run genuine Windows to install Microsoft Security Essentials.

MSE 2.0 works with Windows XP, Vista, and 7.

Download here. (The actual MSE site still provides the 1.x version.)

Discuss this Article 2

Waethorn
on Dec 17, 2010
The MSE site was working fine yesterday. You can confirm it because the filename is just mseinstall.exe for all versions, thought they are actually different files. What wasn't working was Automatic Updates/MU offering it as an upgrade. Also, if you used the "check for updates" option in the help menu of the 1.0 client, 2.0 wasn't offered.

I had problems with a couple computers not getting the updated signatures with 2.0 client yesterday too. Perhaps they are different signatures, what with there being additional protection measures in the new client. The publish time was around 1pm too, which is normally not the time that they publish signatures - mostly they are between 4 and 7am EST.

Waethorn
on Dec 17, 2010
Just FYI: the new integration features for IE and Windows Firewall don't seem to be present on Windows XP.

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