microsoft defender So MSE is gone...

[Swingline]

They seem to have replaced it with Windows defender and the lack of user control with defender kind of irritates me. I really liked MSE for this along with its reliability and clean look. What would be the next best AV now? I already have a full license with Malwarebytes.

[Tarun]

MBAM is not av, but it's a great anti-malware. MSE is just integrated into Windows 10.

avast still works well and gets great ratings.

Personally, I've run without an av for probably over a decade now.

[Swingline]

Thanks Tarun, Wasn't sure if I needed another layer of protection with Windows 10. Do you think a third party firewall is needed seeing as how many privacy issues there are with Windows 10?

[Tarun]

To be completely honest... I tried Windows 10 on my laptop and rolled it back in less than a week. Performance was better, but apps randomly closed.

I'm sticking with Windows 7 for now. We've got a full year to upgrade for free.

I've always made use of a third party firewall, just because I like to see what's going on and how much my applications that I use take up.

[greenknight]

I came real close to rolling back to Win 7 - didn't have that problem, but there was a problem with the OS freezing up, requiring a hard reboot. Happened mainly when closing a game (any game, even solitaire from the app store), with a few random occurrences. The upgrade process was such a mess that I'd hate to go through it again, so I waited to see if it would be fixed - appears it has been, hasn't happened in a while.

I use an app called Windows Firewall Notifier (found it on MajorGeeks), gives control of the Windows Firewall like a third-party firewall and hardens the settings by default. Firewall isn't the way to fix Win 10 privacy issues, though, modifying the hosts file is the way to do it. Various apps being offered do this automatically, but it's not hard to do manually.

[Tarun]

No, you don't want to do that to your Hosts file. That's misuse. Plus, some of the telemetry things bypass the Hosts file completely.

Blocking via your router or using a software firewall is the way to go.

I'm surprised how smooth my upgrade to Windows 10 was. Even the rollback was smooth.

[Tarun]

I know it has been some time since this post. I actually installed Windows 10 on my (now retired) primary PC. The early days of the OS there were of course minor hiccups. I did format and load Windows 10 on. It was smooth sailing ever since. I'm now on 21H1 with zero issues.

While Microsoft Security Essentials is no more. It turned into Windows Defender, which was also built in to Windows 8/8.1 and available as a download for Windows 7.

It's currently also built in to Windows 10 and for over a year and a half it has been the top rated anti-virus.