14 DAY TRIAL // Even if this is not included among Microsoft Security Essentials’ scheduling plans, there is a way to trigger the application to update its virus definitions and perform a system check whenever the computer is idle.
Security Essentials Screensaver can help you with this. It is designed to trigger Microsoft Security Essentials to perform a signature update followed by a system scan. As it is a screensaver, all this will be started only when at computer idle times.
The control of Microsoft’s antivirus is achieved by running it from the command line; but for this job you cannot use just any screensaver you want, but one of the two provided in the Security Essentials Screensaver package.
The difference between them consists in the fact that one of them launches all the Microsoft Security Essentials activity without any visible trace on the screen (Security Screensaver NG – no graphics), while the other shows the command prompt window letting you know that signature update has started or ended. But this is the extent of all information you’ll get; the latter should also show the progress of the scan, but we did not see any of this during our brief testing.
As far as the type of the scan is concerned, it depends on what is in the schedule. If you have a quick verification planned for a specific time and day, than that’s exactly what the screensaver will trigger through command line. If you change it to full scan than the entire system will be subject to verification.
It goes without saying that having Microsoft Security Essentials on the system for all this to work is an absolute must.
What may be seen as a flaw by plenty of users is the fact that the screensaver with graphics enabled will actually run the Microsoft Security Essentials castle logo as a screensaver only after the scan is over. Thus, it does not mask the command prompt displaying the update status (but I guess that hiding it would actually defeat its purpose).
Also on the downside, returning to your screen is possible only by hitting the keyboard. Jiggling the mouse did not do any good in our case.
However, Security Essentials Screensaver is great if you want Microsoft’s antivirus to perform a quick system check while you’re away from the computer.
