Microsoft Security Essentials has proven to be a great anti-malware tool because of its lightweight performance.MSE scans efficiently without being heavy on system resources. You can also check our list of free antivirus for Windows 7 .

However a major problem with Microsoft’s malware solution is that it fails to update when behind used behind a proxy.It gives an error as MSE uses different proxy settings from IE.So even if the logged-in user has a proxy configured MSE completely ignores it and tries to connect directly to the Internet.Security Essentials lacks an option in its GUI to configure its proxy settings.However one can copy IE’s proxy settings to MSE by use of the command prompt.

To update Microsoft security essentials behind a proxy do the following :

• Open the command prompt as an administrator.Search cmd in start menu,right click on it,and select Run As Administrator.

• Once in type “proxycfg -u” (without the quotes) if you are using Windows XP,or “netsh winhttp import proxy ie” (without quotes) when using Windows Vista/Windows 7 and press enter.

These commands copy the IE proxy settings to MSE and after that it would update normally.