If you end up making the decision to keep using Windows 7 after January 14, I strongly recommend that you invest in a really good antivirus and anti-malware program like Malwarebytes. That means your Windows 7 installation itself will be extremely insecure, AND Microsoft Security Essentials won’t be of much help in protecting it.

Why? Because when Microsoft stops providing updates to Windows 7 they’re going to also stop providing them for Microsoft Security Essentials as well. What you won’t be able to do after January 14 is depend on Microsoft Security Essentials to keep viruses and other types of nasties off of your computer. I don’t really recommend that due to the reasons stated in the post I linked to above, but if you decide to forge ahead with Windows 7 anyway you can reduce the significant security risk a bit by using a really good antivirus and anti-malware product. If you have a Windows 7 PC one of the choices you’ll have available to you is to take your chances and keep using Windows 7 even after Microsoft stops releasing critical security updates for it. Microsoft will be ending support for Windows 7 in January 2020, and that move will leave Windows 7 users with a very important choice to make.

Microsoft essentials windows 7