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Announcing Windows Defender Beta 2

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Hi, I'm Adam Overton, the group program manager for the anti-malware technology team. I'm very excited to be blogging today about the availability of Windows Defender Beta 2 which was announced by Bill Gates at his RSA conference keynote earlier this morning. You can download the new beta version from the Microsoft Download Center

. Users who have Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta 1 already installed do not need to first uninstall this program; the installer will automatically upgrade you to Windows Defender Beta 2. There are a lot of exciting and fundamental changes which we have made with this release and I highly recommend that you check out the press release and fact sheet for more details. As previously announced, updates to Windows Defender will be available at no additional charge to Windows customers.

This is the culmination of many months of hard work by our team to provide the best antispyware solution to our customers. We recently topped 25 million active customers in December with Windows Antispyware Beta 1 and hope to grow our customer base even more with this release of Windows Defender Beta 2. If you have any comments on this release, please feel free to respond to this blog entry or post a message to our newsgroups

. We look forward to your feedback as we work towards our final release.

Thanks,

Adam

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 14, 2006
    Hello,

    i get reports that it doesn't get installed on localized Windows versions.
    It looks like that the installer checks for the "Users" group membership, but unfortunatelly it's not looking for the membership with the help of the SID, but with the hardcoded name "Users".
    If the users create a group named "users" then they succeed with the installation.
  • Anonymous
    February 14, 2006
    I have win XP sp2 (Br) when try install Windows defender beta 2 show error 1609 and not complete install...
    didnt find any place about this error..
    be safe Alex
  • Anonymous
    February 15, 2006

    i installed windows defender beta 2. i was wondering about not having an icon in the system tray anymore as with beta 1 version. Am i missing something or is this just going to run in the background? There appears not to be (at least i couldn't find it) a config for icon in tray.

    thx.
  • Anonymous
    February 15, 2006
    I like the idea of moving the AntiSpyware forward with this new product, but after I installed Defender I found out that it does not work with a proxy server. AntiSpyWare worked fine with the proxy and would prompt for the username and password when it accessed the internet for updates. When can we expect Defender to have this same functionality? In the mean time I have less protection after upgrading.
  • Anonymous
    February 15, 2006
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 15, 2006
    It seems Defender is unable to connect to the update center through ISA - Error number is 0x8024401b.

    How do I resolve this?
  • Anonymous
    February 15, 2006
    Sure you added nice features but you totally forget to tell us that you removed the Advanced Tools like Browser restore and Erase tracks. Where did they go? Are they coming back in a new Beta or are they gone forever?
  • Anonymous
    February 15, 2006
    One comment. Bring back the system tray icon. There is no quick way of seeing if it is running or a quick way to shut it down when required. I am "upgrading" back to version 1 on this PC and leaving my other windows machines using 1 because of this
  • Anonymous
    February 18, 2006
    there are two choices for down loading one is regular i guess. and the other is with 64 bit info.
      it says down load the one most near your system.. i don 't know wich one to down load ; how do i tell what is right for me??
     i have windows xp home and that is all i know..  thanks in advance.. ken
  • Anonymous
    February 20, 2006
    It seems Windows Defender doesn't handle proxy authenitcation. Kind of strange, considering the Anti-Spyware beta handled it just fine. Does Windows Defender not do proxy authenitcation? Or does it use a different update process? Is there a location for us to get manual updates?
  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2006
    Windows Defender updating through Windows (or Microsoft) Update is slow and cumbersome. I installed it and it needs updated anti-spyware definitions (signatures), yet Microsoft Update says I do not need any.  I will have to go back to MS Anti-Spyware if it doesn't update today.