[deanhills]

This afternoon must have battled and wasted at least a few hours of my time, and almost lost use of my Windows as well.  Better make backups soon.

Today, out of the blue, my Microsoft Security Essentials stopped working.  Like the little red flag in my security section came up.  I then Googled it, and as predicted hundreds of users have had the same issue from time to time with a number of solutions.  The first one I implemented was to remove the software, make sure there's no other software, and then to reinstall it.  Reinstallation went great, and did the updates and scan, and a few minutes after the same thing happened.  Microsoft Security Essentials turned itself off, and the Windows Red Flag came up again.  I then completely removed it again, and thought this was a great opportunity to try one of those new free antivirus programs.  I went for Bitdefender.  That loaded great, but then immediately it wouldn't allow me to get into my regular Websites, saying they didn't have certificates, that was a lie.  It began to feel too complicated, so I got rid of that too.

Next I thought maybe there are some remnant software that need to be cleaned up.  I used the windows cleanup tool.  After that I thought maybe there could be ones Windows doesn't think off, so in one of the suggestions I found the Reva Cleanup tool, and downloaded a try out version.  HUGE MISTAKE!  For starters, it didn't see any remnants.  I then decided to get rid of it.  And it then suggested to shut the computer down, and out of the blue, Windows started to download updates, when there was no instruction for it to do so.  I panicked as I haven't used those in a long time, and was also worried there was an upgrade that I didn't know about, so tried to abort (for the first time in my computer life) the changes, did a hard exit.  Did that twice, then the third time did a save mode, and went to have a long break, and windows then sorted itself out.  I was chewing my nails as wondering whether I may have lost access to my computer.  

OK, now I started microsoft security essentials from scratch again.  It hesitated and hanged for a while with updating the virus definitions, and then it went on, and so far so good (cross fingers) it seems to be holding for now. Maybe something with Windows trying to fix and unfix things in Windows when I thought I'd almost lost access had fixed something - maybe temporarily though?

Are there any other free antivirus software that is as light as MSE is?  I just have this feeling that MSE is not going to last as from all of the feedback with users with similar issues, it holds for a while, and then revisits with the red flag.

Anyway, I'm going to make backups now. Only 25 minutes left and we're then going off electricity as South Africa is on load sharing - three sessions of 2.5 hours out of 24 hours. Fun!

[Mashiro]

I went for Bitdefender.  That loaded great, but then immediately it wouldn't allow me to get into my regular Websites, saying they didn't have certificates, that was a lie.

This happens because the web protection of these antiviruses is performing a man in the middle attack on all encrypted web traffic by installing its own SSL certificate to decrypt the traffic of sites using HTTPS in order to scan it for viruses and other malicious things.

Usually the antivirus installs its own certificate into the root of the OS CA storage. So there should be no errors. However maybe it didn't work out this time properly. If it works out also depends on the browser because Firefox has its own SSL certificate storage while many other browsers like Internet Explorer, Chrome (Chromium, Opera and other browsers that base on it) and Safari use the OS CA storage. The other reason for it to fail and spit out errors is a properly configured web server on the sites that detects the man in the middle attack and denies the connection with a SSL error.

This kind of web protection is dangerous. The traffic is getting encrypted by the site for the antivirus, the antivirus decrypts it for scanning and encrypts it again for the browser where you finally see the site. In the middle when the scanning happens it can modify the page to its liking. It can send data including login data and etc. to the servers of the company that made the antivirus or even worse to some servers in China.

Just disable web protection and everything should be fine.

Windows started to download updates, when there was no instruction for it to do so.

This is something Windows is known to do at exactly the wrong time and when no one needs it.





About the final question of this thread. Sadly I have no answer. You don't seem to be using Windows 10. It comes with a 10x better Windows Defender version built-in. And otherwise I'm not using any antivirus or antimalware solution. Merely a waste of resources.

I usually only have common-sense.exe installed and brain.exe also works.  

[deanhills]

This happens because the web protection of these antiviruses is performing a man in the middle attack on all encrypted web traffic by installing its own SSL certificate to decrypt the traffic of sites using HTTPS in order to scan it for viruses and other malicious things.

Usually the antivirus installs its own certificate into the root of the OS CA storage. So there should be no errors. However maybe it didn't work out this time properly. If it works out also depends on the browser because Firefox has its own SSL certificate storage while many other browsers like Internet Explorer, Chrome (Chromium, Opera and other browsers that base on it) and Safari use the OS CA storage. The other reason for it to fail and spit out errors is a properly configured web server on the sites that detects the man in the middle attack and denies the connection with a SSL error.

This kind of web protection is dangerous. The traffic is getting encrypted by the site for the antivirus, the antivirus decrypts it for scanning and encrypts it again for the browser where you finally see the site. In the middle when the scanning happens it can modify the page to its liking. It can send data including login data and etc. to the servers of the company that made the antivirus or even worse to some servers in China.

Just disable web protection and everything should be fine.

Exactly what I did.  I removed it completely though.  Bitdefender is probably better than Microsoft Security Solutions, but I was fighting against time.  But then it got worse when I tried to go for an extra cleanup - temporarily disabling my Windows, but looks as though when Windows worked on fixing itself, that it may have solved my original problem with Microsoft Security solutions - so far it's still up and running.  I'm still holding my breath though.  

About the final question of this thread. Sadly I have no answer. You don't seem to be using Windows 10. It comes with a 10x better Windows Defender version built-in. And otherwise I'm not using any antivirus or antimalware solution. Merely a waste of resources.

I usually only have common-sense.exe installed and brain.exe also works.  

You're right.  Windows 7 is now archaic.  I've just got so much going on right now, and changing will take a huge adjustment with all of my old equipment that will need to work with it.  But yes, Windows 10 is obviously much better.  Like by leaps and bound.  Thanks for helping HR.  Another thing the near Windows disaster did to me was tonight to do a fresh round of backups - this has also been overdue, but I thought that that had to be done first.

Haha .... brain.exe .... Today was one of those days where so much happened with Windows but nothing to show for it. I went mostly with instincts and at one point I thought it had landed me in Windows hot water. I was doing things that defied my common sense. Fortunately I just sat it out when that Windows little working circle kept going round and round for about 30 minutes, I waited it out. Windows fixed itself - what a relief that was.