Windows Defender as primary anti-virus program?

[MeAndMyComputer]

Is Windows Defender good enough to use as the primary anti-virus program?

 

[Sven1458]

it is for me,
just run Malwarebytes once a week.

 

[wiganken]

There are better products out there so it depends how computer savvy and a risk taker you are. If you know what you are doing and you don't mind taking a risk then its OK but I would not depend upon it. Remember that no single AV product is 100% effective so, like Sven1458 says, also run other manual scans using another product (do not install two AV products that monitor in real-time or they will clash with each other) . See Microsoft Windows Defender Security Center and Microsoft Windows Defender Antivirus review: Microsoft's free tool is better than nothing – just. To check out what others think do a search using phrases like "Windows Defender Review".

 

[MeAndMyComputer]

Thank you for your responses. I have been using Windows Defender successfully on 2 Windows 10 computers. Now I'm getting a used Windows 8.1 laptop in a few days and the purpose of my question is to have confidence that WD will run effectivetively as well on the laptop I'll be getting. The laptop is going to need a "tune-up" and when it comes to WD, I'll begin by running a full scan as well as the offline scan: even though they take a while to run, I always make sure security is fine.
--- I do run Malwarebytes free as a 2nd opinion program.