Hi Guys,
I hope you can help me. I have a " Dell latitude D 630" computer and am running windows 7, 32-bit home premium. Yeah, I know it’s and oldie, but it does everything I want it to.
I have " Microsoft essentials, real time anti-virus protection.
Today, when I started it up, the anti-virus was turned off. I did not do this.
I did a full scan and it turned on.
Some time later, I turned it on again and the anti-virus was off again.
when I clicked on the start Button (?) it stated that it could not turn on the anti-virus and I should click on the help button. When I did this, the anti-virus turned on.
If I do the restart, it turns off again. It seems like every time I turn off the computer, the anti-virus turns off.
Please, I am 65 years old and this computer stuff is like learning a new language. If you have any ideas about this, explain it very clearly to me, in little words
stosh … the people here on straightdope are knowledgeable … however, if your issue is not resolved … i suggest you go to dell’s forums. your laptop is a dell … why not go to the people who designed your computer?
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/virus-spyware/
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/security/
It could be that you have Microsoft Security Essentials disabled on startup.
Here’s how to check:
- Click on Start Button (round windows button usually on left bottom corner of screen).
- If visible, choose the “Run…” option. If not visible, type in the word “run” without quotes into the “Search programs and files” box, then select the “Run” program (should have blue icon next to it).
- In the Run program, type in the word “msconfig” without quotes and click Enter. This should open up the “System Configuration” window.
- Choose from the top tabs the “Startup” tab.
- From the list of startup items, look for “Microsoft Security Client” and see if it has a checked box next to it. If there is no checkmark, click on the check box to make it checked. Click OK to get out.
Hope this helps.
monimonika,
I did what you suggested and it did not help. ( the box did have a checkmark in it)
One thing I did notice is that, If I turn off the computer or even do a restart, the anti-virus is turned off.
If I play a game or even write this, it comes on.
I don’t know if this matters or not, but it’s the kinda stuff that drives me nuts.
I don’t open any email unless I know where it comes from.
I keep thinking that this is my computer, but I keep getting reminded that it does what it wants or what someone else tells it to do.
Every thing seems to work okay with it and I don’t know if I should worry or not. I hear so much about hacking and I.D. theft that I don’t know what to think.
There are other free antivirus programs, so one option would be to uninstall that one and install a different one, like Avast or AVG or Bitdefender.
But first, is it possible the antivirus just takes a few minutes to start up? Or that it’s busy self-updating (which, with some antiviruses, seems to briefly disable the antivirus while it installs the new version)? Have you tried waiting 10 minutes after booting to see if if eventually starts up?
Another possibility is that the antivirus is on, but whatever visible indication you’re using to see if it’s on isn’t updating. (Sometimes there’s one program that does the actual antivirus work, and another program in charge of all user interaction which sends messages back and forth to the first program.) When you say the AV is off, are you simply looking at the icon in the notification area (lower right corner of the screen) and/or hovering the mouse over it, or are you opening the MSE program and checking there?
I have an icon in the lower right corner.
It’s green when it’s on, yellow when I need to do a scan and red when it’s off.
When I click on it, it opens and tells me whats up. When it’s red and I open it up it says that the anti-virus is turned off and I should turn it on.
I know that there are other programs out there and wonder if I should use them or not.
This has just started on 7/3/2016. I have had this anti-virus program for a long time with no problems.
I don’t think I did anything to cause this. I don’t do anything without asking someone who knows computers.
Have you tried waiting for 10 minutes after booting to see if it eventually starts up?
Check that your computer’s clock is set correctly.
Windows has an Event Viewer program. Sometimes if there’s a software failure, it’ll log a message there, but it can be hard to find the specific list of events that’s appropriate – it keeps a bunch of different logs. Still, if you can find an actual error message and an error code, that would likely be a big clue to what’s going wrong and how to fix it.
Also try uninstalling MSE (via the Control Panel) and then reinstalling it. Sometimes that’s sufficient to fix issues like this.
It sounds to me like some sort of malware has managed to sneak past your antivirus and keeps switching it off.
A few years ago, Microsoft Security Essentials was a top-notch antivirus. It was just as good as the best of the other free antivirus programs out there like AVG and Avast (both of which were better than most of the pay antivirus programs out there at the time). Microsoft seemed to have lost interest in it though, and as viruses continued to advance, MSE didn’t keep up. So now MSE isn’t all that good of an antivirus.
MSE (now called Windows Defender in later versions of Windows) has had its reputation dragged through the mud, and as a result Microsoft has put some more effort into it lately. It still has some catching up to do to get on par with the better antivirus programs though. I personally would recommend that you switch to something else.
For the free antivirus programs, AVG and AVast are both still good. Panda has advanced to become one of the top programs as well. Avira also scores pretty well. Sophos is more of a business class program, but they have a home version that supposedly does well, though it has some annoyances to it.
I personally use Avast, and I can tell you from personal experience that it is annoying as all fucking hell if you don’t switch it into silent gaming mode. But if you put it in silent gaming mode it works very well and doesn’t annoy the crap out of you.
I’ve used AVG and Avira in the past and both worked well. I dumped AVG when it started getting a bit bloated and my computer performance suffered a bit as a result. On a newer computer that probably isn’t going to be as much of an issue.
I have the same laptop you have, Latitude with Win7. I’ve been using AVG forever, no problems (except their recent nagware). If you’ve been using their built-in anti-virus, I’d just disable it and download AVG. I don’t thik MSE is considered all that good anymore, but I don’t really keep up with those kind of things…