Microsoft will soon unveil free virus software

I hope it works, is quiet, and lite to the system. I have been using AVG free on all my computers and I've never had a problem. With windows 7 and vista I gone months with out having an anti-virus. I am sorry to say that over my long history with computers I have learn to stay away from norton/mcafee. They just slow down your computer and I been infected when they where on watch. Don't worry AVG I will continue to support you as long as you keep it up, but please stop telling me when you update or clean a file. Bother me only when you can't clean a virus.

Windows, now with free virus! (C) Ballmer

No, you usually download virus from pr0n sites and/or spam email for free

I still use Windows Live OneCare and like it a lot. Since this is the Morro product that is supposed to be replacing that, its not really un-expected, except that someone at Microsoft must have talked to a reporter out of turn...I wish that they would keep OneCare, though...because it provides so much more...at least to me. --tayme

sweet, this is further proof that Paul's WinSuperShilling nets him inside information. Can't derail that gravy train... and he's right not to, Microsoft is notoriously vindictive to boat rockers. They're almost as relentless as Paul is himself when he's in attack dog mode. Good stuff.

@tayme - RE: Cont. support of OneCare. I second that. I would use OneCare in Windows 7 but Microsoft has said OC won't be supported in Win7

DarkSages, I gotta say that I have the same feelings and experiences as your post, for what it's worth. It's good to know that it's just not me. Thanks, Doc

This anti-virus will most likely be Onecare with all the features (i.e. backup and firewall) stripped out except basic virus scanning. I must say, I LOVE how MS has pulled this off. Windows comes with a nice firewall already. You have Windows defender for malware. And now a free anti-virus. So you pretty much have EVERYTHING for free provided by MS that you otherwise would have to pay for from Sin-moron-tech and and Mc-frack-thee. NICE!! JamesNT

One last question for Paul... Did you ever review the MS OneCare.. and if so, was it as good as AVG?

"Did you ever review the MS OneCare" 10 seconds of research... http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/wloc2.asp

"I wish that they would keep OneCare, though...because it provides so much more...at least to me." It does on XP for sure. On Vista, not so much, but it at least consolidates features that Vista has, and makes it easier to access those features. On Windows 7, Action Center basically is OneCare, sans antivirus, so Morro will just plug into it. FYI: Microsoft always announced that the free antivirus codename Morro will be available when they discontinue retail sales of OneCare. That date was supposed to be something like the end of July. It was also said that Morro is NOT based off the current FCS agent. Instead, it'll be based off the new, more heavily optimized agent that is included in the FCS component of Forefront "Stirling". That's also why it's not ready yet - neither is Stirling. Also, a quick question to the OEM System Builder group gave a response "Partners will receive more information near the end of June". "I was hoping for Microsoft to release its free anti-virus software before, or shortly after, my OneCare subscription had to be renewed earlier this year." Really? I know people that ended up getting emails from the OneCare team (in Canada at least) where they said they were extending their soon-to-be-expiring OneCare subscriptions for another 6 months. That seems to have started about a month ago. "BTW, word of warning, for those using free antivirus from AVG, Avira or Avast, please use another scanner to chek your system regularly. I noticed certain malwares would slip pass and stay dormant in these systems." OneCare has continually been improved on since they received a low score on AV-Comparatives. It only had a bad review once, but AVG and Avast used to be up there near the top slots. Avast is still pretty good, but AVG is now very low in scores. "This anti-virus will most likely be Onecare with all the features (i.e. backup and firewall) stripped out except basic virus scanning. I must say, I LOVE how MS has pulled this off. Windows comes with a nice firewall already. You have Windows defender for malware. And now a free anti-virus." Morro is being developed by the Forefront Client Security (FCS) team. FCS (the client agent program that runs on desktops anyway) looks like Windows Defender and has practically the same feature set. It has the same scanning engine technology too. The only difference is that Defender only scans for spyware/adware, whereas FCS adds in support for Microsoft's AV scanning definitions as well. FCS is designed to be deployed to multiple computers and have monitoring and extra enterprise-level features implemented (it requires a VERY powerful back-end SQL Server-based system for data consolidation and reporting). I've said it before and I'll say it again: I hope the FCS team just take the client agent and makes an easy to use installer for it. Rebranding the FCS agent and creating an installer that automatically installs it in unmanaged mode is all they really have to do to come up with Morro. I wouldn't be surprised if that's what Morro turns out to be, and I would welcome it. Defender works, and so does FCS. Baseing Morro off of an identical code package would make very good sense.

"I second that. I would use OneCare in Windows 7 but Microsoft has said OC won't be supported in Win7" You won't need it in 7. Action Center has all the capabilities of OneCare except for antivirus. Just load Morro on 7 to take care of that last remaining missing option.

I like this part because it makes me laugh: "Microsoft's free product is basically a stripped down version of the OneCare product Microsoft pulled from the shelves," said Symantec Consumer division president Janice Chaffin. "A full Internet security suite is what consumers require today to stay fully protected." So why does Symantec offer a stripped down version of Norton 360, aka Norton Internet Security, or Norton Antivirus then? Does that mean that gamers are left in the lurch too, since they don't make a "Norton 360 Gaming Edition" like they do for Norton AV?

Is Office Accounting also being discontinued?

"One thing that I won't miss from OneCare is its backup and restore feature. It's okay but I wish it had better options, such as restoring full folders." Use the restore search option and just give it the name of the folder.

Hey Paul --- they like you: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8300945231/m/43900849...

Ocean, don't be a d!ck!

Shouldn't the OS just stop viruses from attacking it? Oh no, wait. This is Windows you're talking about. You're plagued with viruses and spyware, so you HAVE to run anti-virus software to protect you. To also slow down your machine. Something OS X users don't have to worry about. Another reason why OS X is so superior to Windows.

"What exactly are you holding back?" The question is, what is Microsoft holding back on? There hasn't been any kind of announcement to partners yet, which I find frustrating with a capital F. A screenshot or deployment whitepaper would at least be something that I would expect by now - especially if they're keeping to their schedule of having it ready when OneCare retail sales are discontinued at the end of July. You (and Microsoft) have to realize that partners want early access to some of this information, because they want to be able to preload this software on new systems on the day of launch. I think it's kind of silly to hold off on information on this. Partners can get access to information before the general public, and information on the partner websites are given out under NDA status unless Microsoft has already gone public with it, so it doesn't make much sense to hold back. It's also the same frustrating reason why Microsoft has said that the Windows 7 deployment kits (for businesses and OEM's) won't be in release form until AFTER general availability. ....I mean, WHAAAAT?!

@Waethorn: Thanks for the tip! I'm going to try it next month during the next scheduled tune up. Another thing that I hope MS learned from OneCare is how it handles notifications. In OneCare, if you don't run Tune-up for more than 5 weeks, you get a warning saying that the status is "Fair". I think that should change to something less alarming. Say, just pop-up a balloon (OneCare is/was infamous for its balloon popups) letting the user know that Tune-up hasn't run in x-days/weeks (I have Tune-up set to run every 4 weeks).

OneCare was a good idea, badly done. (Does the fact that the central backup disk on this machine was offline when the other machine wanted to back up really mean an un-clearable yellow state is called for on this machine--even after the backup does run?) I'm only on 7 now, so OneCare is behind me (but not yet expired). Avast! for now, whilst awaiting Morro. Actually, the laptop is naked now (and this machine was until last week).

@techfan - "One thing that I won't miss from OneCare is its backup and restore feature." Plus, it locks you out of the backup directories and you have to force it to give you permission back. That is actually my biggest complaint about OneCare. --tayme

I just thought of something again...does anyone else notice that a lot of "leaks" are coming out of Redmond lately? Is Microsoft doing that on purpose to build anticipation? Ya gotta wonder. --tayme

I tried One Care when it first came out on mt old XP desktop I wasn't impressed. I'm happy with Avira right now it works on Windows 7 both 64 and X86, its lightweight and effective. I choose Malwarebytes for anti-spyware i'ts used a lot by computer techs for cleanup and very lightweight and fast and integrates well with Avira or NOD32 which I think is the best paid AV out there. @tayme I've been thinking the same lately, the leaks seem to be more common than before, and tell me MS is very confident of their products these days

As a former Program Manager on the OneCare 1.0 team, it's really great to see the people who love the product. Thanks.