Win7: Windows Defender is NOT an anti-virus program?!

[JEDI]

last year, I upgraded my computer to a ssd hard drive.
I reinstalled win7 from scratch.

my antivirus program was Avira (free version) but it took a LONG time to load on my old hard drive.
so i decided not to install it.

i thought Windows Defender was an antivirus program. it was rated lowly but never-the-less, it was anti-virus.

i read something today that it's just an anti-spyware program and not an anti-virus program?

 

[quikah]

Where did you read that? It is an antivirus.



I thought defender was only win 8+. Security essentials was for 7, did they update it?

 

[SparkyJJO]

Windows Defender has been around since the XP SP2 days, however it was very basic and specific, NOT antivirus by any stretch.

Starting with Windows 8 they took Security Essentials, embedded it into the OS as a basic built-in AV solution, and renamed it to take on the old Defender name.