Help for Simple defender Question?

[Steve]

I'm letting lapse the spyware pgm. that came with computer & will use Adaware
& Defender instead. Question is, That I've been hiding the Defender updates &
not downloading them until the last few that came out. When I run "Updates"
it says I'm up to date? Do I not need to find the ones that I hid before or
did the latest updates I ran include all of them as well?

Sorry for such a basic question, but thanks so
much!
Steve

 

[Bill Sanderson]

This is an entirely reasonable question.

If Defender says you are up to date, you are.

There are updates which are incremental, and others which completely replace
all that went before.

If you grab the updates at the security portal:
www.microsoft.com/security/portal (right-hand column--for most users, the
32-bit updates) these updates are larger than many that come in via
AutoUpdate or WindowsUpdate, because they are always complete.

If you update via WindowsUpdate or AutoUpdate, or via Help, Update, within
Defender, you will always get what is needed to bring your install up to
date.

So--yes, there are different kinds of updates, but the various update
mechanisms are smart enough to determine exactly what is needed on your
system to bring you current--and the automatic ones will minimize the
bandwidth needed to get you there.