To help prevent viruses, spyware, or other potentially unwanted software from running on your computer, you should make sure you've turned on real-time protection and selected both real-time protection options. Real-time protection alerts you when viruses, spyware, or other potentially unwanted software attempts to install itself or run on your computer.

To help protect your privacy and your computer, we recommend that you select all real-time protection options. For more information about real-time protection, see What's real-time protection?

When you install Microsoft Security Essentials on your computer, the real-time protection feature is turned on by default. Although it is not recommended, you can turn off real-time protection.

To turn off real-time protection

  1. Click Settings, and then click Real-time protection.

  2. Clear the real-time protection options you want to turn off, and then click Save changes. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or confirm the action.

You can also turn on or off specific features of real-time protection individually. To learn more, see Understanding real-time protection options.