Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), is probably the best free anti-virus, anti-malware and anti-spyware program for PC’s worldwide. If your version of Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 is genuine you can download the Microsoft Security Essentials for free. The software comes with daily free virus signature updates.

Despite his non-cost price, Microsoft Security Essentials is very capable at managing attacks against your PC, but sometimes, like any other anti-virus, it can fail his automatic updates.

This problem is caused by the fact that Microsoft Security Essentials is set by default to check for updates once every 24 hours and 10 minutes after a PC reboot the anti-virus software will check if any network connection is older then 24 hours. If those are true, its starts updating.

The bad part is you miss one of this daily updates sometimes Microsoft Security Essentials will not catch up with the older update. A greater problem is caused by the fact that Microsoft Security Essentials does not consider his virus database old until 7 days have passed.

Microsoft Security Essentials

If you encountered the problem presented above, we recommend the following steps:

• Ensure that Automatic Updates service (wuauserv) and Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) is running.

When making the virus database update, Microsoft Security Essentials depends on the Automatic Update service (wuauserv) and Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS).To check if all is OK you must :

1. Go to  Control Panel
2. Administrator Tools
3. Services and check if the above services are active. If not, select them and press Start from  the left hand panel.

• Manually Update Microsoft Security Essentials

1. Go to the Microsoft Security Essential user interface
2. The Update tab
3. Click on the Update button to check for updates so it looks like this :

Method number 2 in Microsoft Security Essential update problem solving

• Force MSE to Check for New Definitions Update before Running Scheduled Scan:

The trick is to schedule automatic scan on the system, and force Microsoft Security Essentials to check for new signature update before the scan starts.

1. Go to Settings tab.
2. Select Scheduled Scan option.
3. Tick the “Run a scheduled scan on my computer (recommended)” checkbox.
4. Tick the “Check for the latest virus and spyware definitions before running a scheduled scan” checkbox.
5. Untick the “Start the scheduled scan only when my computer is on but not in use” checkbox.
6. Press save changes.

Method number 3 in Microsoft Security Essentials update problem solving

• Manually Download and Install Latest Microsoft Security Essentials Definition Updates:

Microsoft makes the latest anti-virus databases updates free and download-able from HERE.

• Increase Microsoft Security Essentials Virus and Spyware Definitions Signature Update Interval.

You can change the interval between two updates with a simple registry hack, just follow the steps bellow:

1. Press the Start Button.
2. Go to Run.
3. Type regedit in the run panel and then press enter.
4. Navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/Microsoft Antimalware/Signature Updates.
5. In the right pane, double click on the SignatureUpdateVariable.By default, it’s value is 24. Change this value in any number between 1-24.
6. Restart the PC.

With all of these guidelines, you don’t have to wait anymore for Microsoft to release a patch that will fix Microsoft Security Essentials problems.