Microsoft Windows Defender (Beta 2) review

Verdict:

Review Date: 21 Aug 2006

Price when reviewed: Free

Our Rating 2 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

Microsoft's anti-spyware program is currently available as a free download and is now in its second beta release.

The first version appeared at the beginning of 2005 and was less effective than the free Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy scanners. Beta 2 was released in February 2006.

The new interface is an improvement and there are some nice utilities built in. The quarantine area holds detected spyware in limbo, in case you need to restore incorrectly diagnosed files. You can view a list of programs running on the system, and programs set to start automatically when Windows boots, using the Software Explorer option. As with the previous version, you can choose to join Microsoft's SpyNet system, which lets you submit spyware to a central database.

When we copied over our potentially hostile files to the test PC, Windows Defender ignored them. However, it kicked into action when we tried installing two well-known adware programs. It alerted us that the files were dangerous and provided an option to remove them. It appeared to be behaving better than its predecessor.

The next test involved installing a rogue anti-spyware utility that claims to be the most advanced spyware detection and removal application on the internet, but which is actually spyware itself. Windows Defender let this program install and run, labelling it in its logs as 'Not yet classified'. Finally, we ran the Ad-Aware scanner, which discovered six spyware-related Registry entries.

Windows Defender didn't protect our test system properly. Considering that it also failed to detect the rootkit file, we simply cannot recommend this utility, despite the fact that it is free.

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