Windows Defender Offline Beta?

[muckshifter]

What is Windows Defender Offline Beta?

Sometimes, malicious and other potentially unwanted software, including rootkits, try to install themselves on your PC. This can happen when you connect to the Internet or install some programs from a CD, DVD, or other media. Once on your PC, this software might run immediately, or it might run at unexpected times. Windows Defender Offline Beta can help remove such hard to find malicious and potentially unwanted programs using definitions that recognize threats. Definitions are files that provide an encyclopedia of potential software threats. Because new threats appear daily, it's important to always have the most up-to-date definitions installed in Windows Defender Offline Beta. Armed with definition files, Windows Defender Offline Beta can detect malicious and potentially unwanted software, and then notify you of the risks.

To use Windows Defender Offline Beta, you need to follow four basic steps:

Download Windows Defender Offline Beta and create a CD, DVD, or USB flash drive.

Restart your PC using the Windows Defender Offline Beta media.

Scan your PC for malicious and other potentially unwanted software.

Remove any malware that is found from your PC.

Windows Defender Offline Beta will walk you through the details of these four steps when you're using the tool. If you've been prompted in Microsoft Security Essentials or Windows Defender to download and run Windows Defender Offline Beta, it's important that you do so, to make sure that your data and your PC isn't compromised.

To get started, find a blank CD, DVD, or USB flash drive with at least 250 MB of free space and then download and run the tool—the tool will help you create the removable media.

Sauce (sic)

The branding history of WDO goes something like this. Back in 2004, Microsoft bought a company called GIANT AntiSpyware and turned that product into Microsoft AntiSpyware the next year. MS then rewrote it and renamed it Windows Defender in 2006 — and made it a free download for Windows XP. Later, MS built Windows Defender into Vista and Windows 7.

In 2005, Microsoft also bought a company called Sybari and turned Sybari's antivirus product into a corporate AV suite — Microsoft Forefront. Many companies are still running Forefront.

Microsoft then created a free, consumer/small-business version of Forefront and called it Microsoft Security Essentials. If you download and install MSE on a PC that has Windows Defender (whether manually installed on XP or baked into Vista and Win7), it automatically disables the Windows Defender user interface and takes over Defender's functions — MSE effectively supersedes Windows Defender.

It now appears that Microsoft is recycling the Windows Defender name, but none of the original WD code. Windows President Steve Sinofsky, who's in the thick of finishing Windows 8, stated in a Building Windows 8 blog, "With Windows 8, we are extending the protections provided by Defender to address a broader range of potential threats." He added that Win8 will have "improvements to Windows Defender to provide you with real-time protection from all categories of malware …."

In short, there's every indication that Windows Defender Offline is based on the Forefront/Microsoft Security Essentials code base and has absolutely nothing in common with the old Windows Defender — regardless of what you may have read in the computer press.

Regardless of its history, Windows Defender Offline's primary advantage is as a self-booting anti-malware system. Try it out!

There is a lot of pedigree to this AV system, I'll certainly give it a try out.

 

[RichardJ69]

Thank you for letting us know. We are currently using MS security essential. Than still need Windows Defender Offline Beta?
I am happy with security essential.

 

[muckshifter]

Windows Defender Offline's primary advantage is as a self-booting anti-malware system.

No, it's not a replacement and/or, its primary role, in my eyes, is a 'tool' to be used when you are already stuffed.


oh, and it is out of BETA