Disable Windows Defender

Hello NameNameName(Whatevs),

Welcome to Microsoft Office Community Forum. Thank you for sharing your concern with us today and we hope that all is well.

We understand that you need assistance in disabling Windows Defender. Let’s us check on this together and sort this out. Rest assured, we will do anything in our capability to assist you with your concern.

Meanwhile, here are methods we can perform that can possibly fix the issue.
Create test Profile

Create a local user or administrator account in Windows (microsoft.com)

Try to disable Windows Defender again and see if it helps.
Turn off Defender antivirus protection in Windows Security (microsoft.com)

I also found a link that might be helpful.

We look forward to your response. If you have other clarifications about this matter, you can get back to us by replying to this post.

Hi,

We have noticed that you haven’t replied to our last response.

We want you to know that it is important for us to help you get your query answered.

Please reply back to this thread if you still need further support.

You might want to have a look at

Hi,

sorry I forgot to answer as I was a bit busy when I saw this. My user account has administrator rights, I can try creating another profile, but I doubt that will change anything honestly. I also tried disabling windows defender from settings, it allows to turn off the sliders, but it doesn't kill the proccess and just slides on on reboot. Defender keeps working even with the sliders off. And I already tried what the link suggests, namely, enabling the group policy and edditing the key on reggedit. Didn't work, the registry reverts back on reboot. The group policy also just reverts back to Not Configured if I reopen de window. Any change to those two seems to not be committed. I think that the issue is that MsMpEng is trying to prevent any tampering with this configuration. Anti Tampering protection from settings is off of course, but maybe there is another way that windows defender can prevent me from disabling it? Thank you.

Hello NameNameName(Whatevs),

I could not really imagine how important it is for you to be able to rectify this issue at the soonest time possible. However, we have realized that this issue of yours would be dealt better by our live support team so that they can properly check what’s going on with your device and applications. They are more equipped with all the tools and resources to get your problem diagnosed. Kindly follow the steps below to contact our LIVE SUPPORT TEAM.

Did you ever read and tried the advices mentioned in my reply of January 21 to you?

>

I'm afraid I did try your advice. Didn't work either. For more information, I did have Windows Defender deactivated by group policy before in this device, but after a Windows Update it came back again. This problem doesn't occur in my other windows devices, not yet at least, when it comes back with an update, I just deactivate it again. I'll try contacting live support. Thank you for your time. If they come with a solution I'll post it back here.

Same, I've tried as far as possible to disable Windows Defender in virtue of high RAM usage. It takes up to 1.5GB memory at times. Also, I tried modifying the registry, downloading sh using wim_tweak.exe to disable all its process, whereas Windows Defender deletes the DWORD item and reboots the antimalware service automatically. It may well be that Windows defender dismisses attempts to disable Win Denfen as malware behaviours, because it told me that a threat called VirTool:Win32/DefenderTamperingRestore is detected just after I run the batch script, thus triggering WinDefen's self-protection and the registry is restored. Just my personal impression, as a common user.

Hi Werner_11,

In the end I could not find a solution and live support didn't offer any valuable insights. After some months, I ended reinstalling Windows in my machine. This time, after some minor setbacks, I could disable WinDefender through regedit after disabling tampering protection. I cannot say for sure what was different this time. Just know that maybe reinstalling Windows if you can may be an option if you're still experiencing issues with Windows Defender. I hope Microsofts fixes this by just making easier to opt out of Windows Defender. But they won't.