March 1st, 2006
Windows Defender annoyances
I blogged last week about Windows Defender and complained about PCMag.com’s review. I said I’d test Defender against some real spyware, not just 6 commercial keyloggers. The next day I started to install Windows Defender on one of my virtual machines. It was a no go because… my VM is running Windows XP with no service packs and Windows Defender requires Service Pack 2. I have currently have no VMs with Service Pack 2 since it interferes with spyware research. Service Pack 2 is definitely good for users, but not for malware research.
Now that I’m back home after being away for almost 3 weeks, I’ll have time to create a new VM for XP with Service Pack 2 to test Defender. I do have Defender on my laptop, but even though I turned it off and was not using the real time protection features, it tries periodically to add a new task to the Windows Task Scheduler for a daily scan, which I find annoying. Thanks to WinPatrol’s Scotty for keeping watch on such things.
My other gripe is I can’t seem to find a way to check for updates from within the program. The definition updates come through Windows Update and depending on your update settings, notify you, or download and install automatically. I suppose its good for the masses to have WD automatically update and automatically scan, but I prefer to manually update all my apps except my AV. At any rate, I still have plans to test Windows Defender against real world spyware and blog the results.
Update March 6, 2006: See how Windows Defender Beta 2 did against real spyware here.
