Microsoft Security Essentials

[wdrbbq]

I may have a problem with Microsoft Security Essentials. I have it set to run a full scan every day at one am. Today, at 10:21 am my icon turned orange. Upon opening I found that real-time protection was on and my virus and spyware definitions were up to date. Then I looked in the bottom left corner of the box and saw this, "Scheduled scan: Daily around 1:00 AM (Full scan). Last scan: Today at 1:28 AM (Full scan)" What could be the problem? Why would it tell me my computer status is "potentially unprotected"? If I ignore the orange icon is there a chance that the situation will correct itself tomorrow morning when it's scheduled to run another full scan?
I'm on an Acer Aspire 5517 with Windows 7 and Verizon High Speed.

[JasmineSmith4u]

Computer security is an important consideration for computer users and for sure, you will never love the idea of running your system without taking advantage of adequate protection. However, you should choose the best operating system that will make it possible for you to gain enormous benefits from it.

[ShyguyXPC]

I may be out of line here, but I'm going to make a prediction that the Tool of a statement above is someone prepping to post some spamming garbage somewhere in the forums. It just sounds too much like some spammer with some ignorant, irrelevant, comment to a thread. (excluding my own comment in regards to theirs)

Apparently the idiot above my post (not the original Poster), didn't see the mention of Security Essentials or Windows 7, which tells you they HAVE antivirus protection and they have ALREADY CHOSEN their Operating system.

[wdrbbq]

I'm with you ShyguyXPC. I don't see how it's relevent or useful. However I did receive a potential solution involving Ccleaner in conjunction with Microsoft Security Essentials. I've applied the suggested solution, ran a quick scan, rebooted, and the icon has remained green but I want to give it another day or two before I conclude that the problem has been solved. So far so good though.

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

It could possibly have just been that it was unable to check for updates or something might have been picked up by a scan - possibly something in your temp files, which might have been cleared when you restarted...

I'd suggest you have a look through the logs; both the logs within the application, and the Event Logs for the computer..

[wdrbbq]

I must confess that I wouldn't begin to know how to look through or even find event logs for the computer. As far as updates are concerned, when I found the icon had turned orange and subsequently opened the box I found that the realtime protection was on and the definitions were up to date. That's what confused me. Everything seemed normal. At the same time it both indicated that the most recent scan had been completed as scheduled and that I haven't run a scan in "a while" and my system may be unprotected.
As I indicated previously, I've applied a suggested solution and it appears to be working. I just want to give it a little more time before I'm convinced the problem has been solved. It involves unchecking a couple of boxes in the Applications section of Ccleaner that could affect some data in the Microsoft Essentials files. Thanks for your input.

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

I must confess that I wouldn't begin to know how to look through or even find event logs for the computer.

Right click "Computer" ("My Computer" in pre-Fista M$ OS versions) and go down to 'Manage'. Go to 'System Tools', 'Event Viewer'...or just run:

eventvwr

You'd want to be looking in "System" and "Application" to start things off....

[wdrbbq]

Ok, I understand that. Now, what exactly am I looking for when I open the event viewer? Thanks for your help by the way Nude Lewd Man. This is educational for me even if it doesn't directly lead to a solution. I'm learning things I may find useful at a later date in any event.

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

Look for the time (and date!) that things started going awry, and review the entries you can see...


I actually had to do this earlier on my W2k3 server, as it had stopped responding to file requests this morning...and I wanted to see what caused it - what was happening before this, and any other schtuffs.. Turns out that the OS thought that it had had an unexpected restart at ~02:40 and that was why it was being flakey when I was trying to access data at ~10:15 (and why I got a message on my BB stating that it couldn't connect to the Exchange) and why the screen was all grey/white...

[wdrbbq]

Ok, I'll see what I can find. I'm not exactly sure when things went awry since I only have the time I actually noticed that the icon turned orange. I don't know when what caused the problem actually occurred. I'll get back to you and let you know if I find anything questionable. Thanks again.

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

There are only really three levels of things listed in there... Error, Warning and Info.



Basically, in summary:

Info (white) is just that - something started successfully, something was told (by an application/etc) to stop and stopped, the OS has been up for ___ seconds, or something else along that sort of line..

Warning (yellow) is something to look at (in the logs) as it could be the start of [or continuation of] an issue.

Error (red) is where something that should be running tried to run and was unable to, or something that was running fell over, or that there's been any other major issue which you should investigate further...

[wdrbbq]

Thanks Nude Lewd Man. I haven't got the time to do it at the moment but I do have time to thank you and to say that I'll get back to you a little later on with what I find out as well as a couple of thousand other questions for you, I'm sure. Thanks. Later.

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

No worries..

BTW, the event properties box will give you a description of what it is for....most often there's a link in there that will take you to a page with more information..
(To be honest, I tend not to bother following the links any more though...from what I remember, it is just a table of what the event ID numbers normally mean - and isn't massively helpful when you actually want to know more)

[wdrbbq]

I ran the event viewer and found a litany of warnings. There had to be thirty and some within the last hour. How do I find out how serious they are and what they mean?

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

It is difficult to answer that without seeing what the alerts are...perhaps you could take a screenie (with the window maximised, and post it) so I/we could give you a hint as to which to look into - but thirty in an hour is something I'd prolly want to investigate properly...

Obviously there's a difference between 30 warnings for the same issue and 30 alerts for different things, which is why it isn't easy to say 'do _____' or 'investigate __________' without seeing what's there...

[Taxmancometh]

In case you don't know how to take a screen shot. Press Print screen on the keyboard and go into paint, then go to file / paste.

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

..or, as they're using W7, just select "Snipping Tool" when you search from the Start menu....

[wdrbbq]

Ok, I'll see what I can do. I must have misled you slightly. I have about thirty warnings with one as early as an hour before I mentioned it, not thirty in an hour. The thirty were spread over a few days. I'll try a screenshot but for now, just from memory, I can say that there were many things referenced with some duplication but it seems that they were quite diverse. I'll get the screen shot to you soon. Thanks again.

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

Ah, I misunderstood your "thirty and some" as being a number, like "thirty something"....rather that there being thirty in there, some of which were in the last hour...

That sounds much better...

BTW, the other day I had well over thirty within an hour, for a few hours, when I looked in the logs for my W2k3 server...most of which were repeat entries for Exchange and BackupExec, but that was due to services falling over - which has been sorted now...

[wdrbbq]

I have a screen shot I want to send to you but there's a snag. I took a screen shot, pasted it to Paint, named it and entered it into my pictures file, but now I can't figure out how to attach it to this reply. If I click on the icon above (Insert Image) I get a box asking for a url. That threw me. I have no idea what to do next.
Also, I think it may be a moot point now anyway. I took too long to take the screen shot and have lost all of the yellow triangle warning icons which lined the left border of the table. Now the summary says 0 events in the last hour, 2 in 24 hours and 34 in 7 days. I think it would have shown what I was talking about had I taken the screen shot when the thirty warnings were more current. Sorry.
If you still wish to see the screen shot I can send it if you can tell me how. Thanks once again, Nude Lewd Man for trying to help me in spite of myself. I really wish I had been able to capture the readout with all of the yellow triangles.