Microsoft Security Essentials provides most of the protection methods that Windows Defender does with the exception of rootkit and bootkit protections. While it is not possible to directly download Windows Defender to install, we can instead make use of Microsoft Security Essentials which is available as a slightly cut down version for older versions of Windows, such as Windows 7, in order to help protect against viruses, spyware and other malicious software. To provide a basic level of security in a small server environment, we can install Microsoft Security Essentials with some simple modifications which contains most of the functionality of Windows Defender for free.īy default if you try to install Microsoft Security Essentials in Windows Server you will receive various errors which we will cover how to fix here. Windows Defender has been built into Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 by default to provide protection against malware, however there is no such default program installed in the Windows server operating system.

Microsoft essential win 7