Windows AntiSpyware is now officially Windows Defender. Dwight Silverman has more details here, and Windows Connected has a gallery of screenshots here.
I’ll have some thoughts after I’ve had a chance to work with the new beta.
Windows Defender beta is out
Published
Ed Bott 
I’m very pleased with the new look and reorganization. I miss the ActiveX and BHO sections in the Advanced Tools though. Those two sections came in handy before.
One thing that bothers me though, and that I hope is addressed before the beta period is up, is that the installer checks the Windows Genuine Advantage status of the machine, in addition to having undergone the check to download. I understand the check, and I like the idea of WGA, but if I have a machine where spyware has fubar’d the network connection and the machine hasn’t undergone the WGA check, I can’t run the tool and clean the computer. In other words, I can’t clean other machines with one download.
I’ve kept the AntiSpyware beta on my USB keychain because it makes it easy to clean the computers of friends. I guess I won’t be able to do that anymore.
So I hope they change their stance on that before the beta is up.
I find this a step back from the AntiSpyware Beta. In particular, the removal of the System Explorers for BHOs, ActiveX, and shell extentions makes the product less useful for me. These features could have been left in and made unobtrusive for the unenlightened user.
Stephen
Hey Ed:
I installed Windows OneCare beta and am now having some security issues. Nortons identifies an attack coming from Microsoft’s OneCare IP 207.46.235.25 The attacks are a Apple QuickTime and ITunes Overflow type. The original attacks were identified as origin.windowsonecare.com. I complained to the OneCare team and the only change has been that now the IP is no longer identified as coming from windowsonecare.com. But, they are using the same IP#. The attacks keep coming. I have turned off OneCare.
This reminds me of the days when mandatory Internet Explorer upgrades would disable Netscape Navigator and Real Player.
Are you familiar with this situation? What should I do? Thanks Dr John
After I installed Windows Defender, IE could no longer download files of any type. The process seeme to work normally. The downloaded file could even be seen in the folder specified, but as soon as the download dialog closed, the file was deleted. I found a handful of reports in newsgroups, but no real explanation.
Uninstalling Windows Defender immediately corrected the issue. Reinstalling (in my case) was successful with no re-occurance of the problem.
Complete account on my blog at http://mitch.contla.net/2006/04/14/defender-stops-ie-from-downloading/
PS. I agree with Stephen… I preferred the AntiSpyware program that preceded Defender.