Gave up on Defender, too buggy with Win2K

[Guest]

A few months ago I signed up to using Defender, but after several frustrating
weeks with it, gave up and removed it from my PC. It caused unnecessary
problems with my operating system, Win2KSP4.

I encountered two main problems with it - constant alerts that related to
non-existent scheduled tasks (all scheduled tasks on my PC are disabled, and
there aren't any, anyway), and a system slow shutdown bug that was introduced.

Now, I used MS Antispyware Beta throughout its lifecycle and never had a
problem with that, but Defender Beta, though supposed to be simpler, was just
a damn nuisance on my PC. Beside the constant bogus alerts, it caused my PC's
shutdown time to extend to more than a minute. I reported all of these things
to the newsgroup fairly early on and had some mildly useful discussion on the
matter, but it was clear that Microsoft were not especially interested and no
significant updates to Defender were to be issued, to try to deal with the
problem. So, in the end, I used my system backup to fold back to a former
version of my PC's status, without Defender.

Sorry I can't be more positive. With a beta you should anticipate a few
problems, I know, but the ones I encountered were a real backward step. I'd
like to use Defender but, with bug corrections being so incredibly tardy (if
non-existent), I continue to be put off by it.

I wish I still had MS Antispyware as operational, but it appears that,
although it still resides on my machine, it's been disabled.

How many major updates to the user's Defender software have there been in,
say, the last two months? Any?

 

[Bill Sanderson MVP]

There've been no updates to the UI code distributed since April. I'll not
give you any argument--I'm glad that you've tried the product and published
your feedback here--thanks for helping, and I'm sorry that it didn't work
well for you.

 

[Guest]

A few months ago I signed up to using Defender, but after several frustrating
weeks with it, gave up and removed it from my PC. It caused unnecessary
problems with my operating system, Win2KSP4.

I encountered two main problems with it - constant alerts that related to
non-existent scheduled tasks (all scheduled tasks on my PC are disabled, and
there aren't any, anyway), and a system slow shutdown bug that was introduced.

[snip]

I use it on one of my Win2K machines and the only "bug" I've noticed is
that it ignores the daily scan setting, and insists on reminding me that
no scan has been done in N days. I've tried many things (changing the
scan options, to try to re-set the settings) to no avail.

My guess is that once Vista comes out, Win2K is going to be a sort of
WinNT/98SE/blah-type system in terms of MS support. Life moves on - the
problems of maintaining software for N older versions of an OS are very
tricky.

MS released in 2002 a wireless networking product that was supposed to
work for Win98SE - but it caused corruption on data transfers with older
USB ports. The MS tech support pointed fingers at each other (wireless
product support blamed OS and OS blamed wireless support) and I wasted a
lot of time trying to argue and complain about truth in advertising. I
finally just upgraded from Win98SE to Win2K - it was easier than
swimming against the stream.

 

[Bill Sanderson MVP]

Are you using a registry cleaner?
--

A few months ago I signed up to using Defender, but after several
frustrating weeks with it, gave up and removed it from my PC. It caused
unnecessary problems with my operating system, Win2KSP4.

I encountered two main problems with it - constant alerts that related to
non-existent scheduled tasks (all scheduled tasks on my PC are disabled,
and there aren't any, anyway), and a system slow shutdown bug that was
introduced.

[snip]

I use it on one of my Win2K machines and the only "bug" I've noticed is
that it ignores the daily scan setting, and insists on reminding me that
no scan has been done in N days. I've tried many things (changing the scan
options, to try to re-set the settings) to no avail.

My guess is that once Vista comes out, Win2K is going to be a sort of
WinNT/98SE/blah-type system in terms of MS support. Life moves on - the
problems of maintaining software for N older versions of an OS are very
tricky.

MS released in 2002 a wireless networking product that was supposed to
work for Win98SE - but it caused corruption on data transfers with older
USB ports. The MS tech support pointed fingers at each other (wireless
product support blamed OS and OS blamed wireless support) and I wasted a
lot of time trying to argue and complain about truth in advertising. I
finally just upgraded from Win98SE to Win2K - it was easier than swimming
against the stream.