Resolved Microsoft Security Essentials thinks it hasn't run for a while.

I started seeing this message a couple of days ago. I had set it to perform a quick scan daily but that had been reset to a weekly one. I have no idea what could have done the reset.

This afternoon I uninstalled it, downloaded it and installed it again. After automatically updating itself it did a quick scan but still displays the message that "You haven't run a scan on your PC for a while ", and the parts of its display window and the system tray icon which are normally green are now that awful brown/orange.

Why is this?

 

I remembered that thread Evan, and the first thing I did was to check that the relative box in CCleaner was not checked.

I use jv16 Power Tools' registry cleaner occasionally, on the safest setting, but I'm sure that isn't responsible. And I use Spybot Search and Destroy occasionally too, but I see nothing in there which could alter CCleaner settings.

In fact the settings in MSE haven't changed after running both CCleaner and Spybot.

 

Evan, I did that but it didn't help.

I now have more problems anyway. I have been unable to reinstall MSE after uninstalling it and I can't fully use IE8.

I am getting help from Microsoft and will post back here when things are resolved.

Would you be good enough to explain. I have not read any other criticism of MSE.

 

Ok Arie, I misunderstood.

 

Thank you Arie, that checklist page is very interesting.

I have opened a support case with Microsoft, alluded to, but not explained, in my penultimate post.

 

Rather annoyingly the problem seemed to escalate, or at least was joined by another problem/s.

I wasn't able to reinstall MSE, and very soon after I was unable to use IE except from the Home page, which I have set to Google. Searches were carried out ok, but I couldn't use any of my Favorites or desktop URL shortcuts.

I rectified this by downloading IE8 again and installing over the top of the (apparently) corrupted one.

Microsoft responded to my help request with a rather long list of things to do, and a subsequent modified list after I couldn't carry out a few things on the original one.

I shall attach text files of the two items of email from them.

The original problem of MSE changing the colour of its tray icon is still present. I shall try one or two things myself to find out what is causing this. It doesn't seem to be CCleaner because after a reboot the colour reverts to green but changes back to orange some time after without me having run CCleaner.

But any suggestions would be welcome.

 

Yes, of course Evan.

 

Microsoft's ultimate advice was to run msconfig, disabling items under the Startup and Services tabs to see if that made any difference.

I started by disabling everything under Statup and everything other than Microsoft Services and re-enabling one or two services at a time.

That initially cured the problem but I would leave the system like that for many hours, until satisfied that the problem didn't recur, and then re-enable one or two more.

It took quite a while as you can imagine. So far so good, although there are items under Services which I still haven't enabed. Some of them have a delayed start.

Since everything seems satisfactory I don't think there is any point in re-enabling those other items, do you?

 

The disabled items under Services are

Defragmentation-Service
InstallDriver Table Manager
Windows CardSpace
Macromedia Licensing Service
Mozilla Maintenance Service

all of which are of "Unknown" manufacturer, and

Nvidia Update Service Daemon Nvidia Corporation


There are several in Startup too.

 

There's little point in keeping this thread open.

The problem has been overcome. The remaining items in msconfig which I haven't yet investigated shouldn't, I'm sure, be difficult to deal with.