wilbyhillbilly

When you removed Microsoft Security Essentials, did you just delete files or did you use Control Panel to remove it like you should have?

If you just wiped out files, there probably are still entries in Registry that are telling the system that it's already there.

Most downloads of Microsoft programs will give you a list of files, with file sizes and issue dates, if you search hard enough for it (so that you can check for authenticity). If you're stuck with Registry entries but not the files, you may be able to use regedit to search for the filenames in the download list. This may not work though since often the files are compacted for download and a file in the download may "unpack" to several files with different names.

Your computer also should have an installation log for the program that you can theoretically "read backward" to see if all the "steps" were backed out; although I can't tell you where to find the logs on your machine, and they can be deleted by Disk Cleanups.

Also, the current "final version" requires that Microsoft recognize your OS as "genuine." I'm not sure whether that requirement was imposed for betas. Since Microsoft will give you "critical" updates even for "unregistered" OS installations, getting auto-updates doesn't prove that your OS installation is registered properly - and changes you've made recently may have "corrupted" or lost the registration. You might try "re-registering" the OS to make sure you're getting all the goodies. (If you go to the update site and select "Custom Install" it should ask you to "register your computer" in order to see optional updates, if that's part of the problem.)

John