If you use Microsoft Security Essentials for antivirus protection, keep an eye on the icon in the lower right. The exclamation point means it’s ready to install the upgrade to version 2, released a few weeks ago as a manual upgrade and now being rolled out to everyone using the program. Double-click on the icon and click on the “Upgrade Now” button for a painless process that should take only take 3-4 minutes.
You may be asked to restart the computer when the upgrade has been installed. (I’m not sure when that’s required, but I’ve only had to restart on about half the computers I’ve worked on.)
If you don’t see the exclamation point, no worries – either it hasn’t been rolled out to you yet, or it’s already been installed.
After the upgrade, you may continue to see the exclamation point, this time requesting an update to the virus definitions. It will get those by itself shortly, or you can push the “Update Now” button to hurry things along.
I don’t know yet if I can push this out automatically to clients with my monitoring software. For the moment, look sharp!
