Defender and New OneCareLive

[Guest]

Since I received the OneCare update which scans for spyware and malware
simultaneously, I have begun to receive alerts that Defender has been turned
off and needs to be restarted.

Is this problem related to the OneCare update, or to something else?

Any idea why Defender turns itself off, or is being turned off?

Or ... is it supposed to be turned off now?

Thank you, nice people.

 

[Bill Sanderson MVP]

Philip Taron, of Microsoft, has posted that if you are running the 1.5
version of OneCare, which directly incorporates antispyware technology, you
should, in fact, uninstall Windows Defender (or, on Vista, disable it--which
presumably OneCare has already done.

I'm curious about what is generating these alerts?

 

[Stephen Boots MVP-MSN Client]

Philip Taron, of Microsoft, has posted that if you are running the 1.5
version of OneCare, which directly incorporates antispyware technology, you
should, in fact, uninstall Windows Defender (or, on Vista, disable it--which
presumably OneCare has already done.

I'm curious about what is generating these alerts?

If you are running XP, you do not need to uninstall Defender as it
will be enabled should you choose to uninstall WIndows Live OneCare.
Also, the additional tools that Defender includes are not available in
the OneCare interface, so it does not hurt to manually start Defender
if you want to use the utilities. Shut Defender down when you're done,
but OneCare will disable Defender on next start anyway.
I suspect that the alerts are coming from Security Center, but I'm not
sure, Bill.
-steve

 

[Bill Sanderson MVP]

Thanks, Steve! I don't think that the XP Security Center knows about
antispyware as a category, thus my curiosity. I was dismayed that OneCare's
implementation of the antispyware technology didn't include the additional
software explorer tools.

--

 

[Guest]

Continuing Saga ...After reading Bill's first reply, I deleted Defender.
Steve's reply led me to decide to wait before re-installing Defender, to see
if I received any more error messages.

I have not seen any error messages, but today I tried to download Defender.
Guess what? Message says I cannot download Defender because I already have
Live One Care.

Never a dull minute in the life of a semi-computer literate user! LOL

 

[Bill Sanderson MVP]

I understand the confusion--and some of it is probably because of what I
believe is an actual change of direction by Microsoft.

In the end what matters is that OneCare incorporates antispyware protection
which I believe is equivalent to that provided by Windows Defender, although
the user interface is somewhat different, and even simpler.

Do bear in mind, though, that if you choose to uninstall OneCare at some
later time, you should either install another anti-malware product which
incorporates antispyware protection, or download Windows Defender and
install it at that time.