Your recommendation of Avast does carry some weight, especially since I know there was a time when you recommended MSE, e.g. If anyone finds a good way to disable the nagging in MSE, they will certainly receive some reputation from me!Ĭlick to expand.Hello Richard. One thing's for sure: I will never go back to AVG Free, which is the mother of all nagware! Of course we could always switch to a third-party antivirus, with certain exceptions: Vista No Longer Supported by Some Security Software. When Microsoft ended support for XP in 2014, they threatened to cut off MSE definition updates for XP in July 2015 ( Microsoft antimalware support for Windows XP ? Microsoft Malware Protection Center) - but apparently that never happened : I could easily post links from 2016 showing that XP diehards were still getting MSE definition updates. This sinister move by Microsoft comes as no surprise considering their history: Microsoft Security Essentials to nag Windows XP users | ZDNet.ĭoes this mean that those running Vista will not be able to use MSE after April 11? I don't think so, but time will tell. The link in the 'after' screenshot currently leads to a recycled Windows XP notice that does not even mention Vista ( ). Note that the client version remains the same: only a definition and engine update was required to initiate the infernal nagging (not that disabling definition updates would be a good idea). Thanks to a heads-up from DrJacqui ( ), I was able to capture before-and-after screenshots.

Microsoft security essentials xp