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Two questions I hope people can help me with:

1) I recently bought a new laptop with Windows 7, and I need to install antivirus/antimalware software on it. Is anyone familiar with Microsoft Security Esentials? How does it compare to other antivirus software?

2) My wife's USB drive is constantly picking up viruses from work. Can anyone recommend a good antivirus for U3 (preferably free)? I tried using Avast, but it doesn't seem to prevent infection.

Thanks

1) MSE is perfectly fine, especially when paired with a properly configured (the default is fine) Windows 7 Firewall. Remember not to run in administrator and you'll be fine.

2) I'd suggest asking her workplace to have slightly better data security practices, and unfortunately I can't think of any good portable AVs.

MSE tests surprisingly well - rivaling Avira in all categories, yet with none of the false positives. There's no reason not to use it, though Eset works as well.

For the USB drive, you can start by disabling autoplay.

Windows 7 already disables all autoplay from USB drives (except if they are in a fake CD-like partition, but viruses can't really make that on the fly), so at least there isn't such worry. You still can't prevent them from getting infected (that would, ironically, require some sort of protection software starting up when the USB drive is inserted into the computer) on the multitude of crap-infested XPs that are around, but at least your computer won't be auto-infected when you insert the USB drive with the virus on it.

Add MSE, with its perfectly fine protection, to the mix and, yes, you'll be annoyed with detection prompts regarding the poor USB drive, but no viruses should get through.

Netko wrote:Windows 7 already disables all autoplay from USB drives (except if they are in a fake CD-like partition, but viruses can't really make that on the fly), so at least there isn't such worry. You still can't prevent them from getting infected (that would, ironically, require some sort of protection software starting up when the USB drive is inserted into the computer) on the multitude of crap-infested XPs that are around, but at least your computer won't be auto-infected when you insert the USB drive with the virus on it.

The problem is that our desktop computer (as opposed to our laptop) is still running XP and will for the forseeable future. It's not a major problem - the Avast scanner I have on my desktop catches the viruses - I'd just prefer to prevent the USB from being infected in the first place.