How do I uninstall Windows Defender?

I was "conned" into installing "McAffee, Internet" something by an unscrupulous web designer who automaticly installed this POS software onto my computer, and now my Windows Defender Errors with 0x800106ba

I have been reading all the solutions for this problem, and I have uninstalled the McAffee POS program, and I have tried to set Windows Defender to "automatic" but it just keeps setting back to "manual".

The Microsoft solution says to "uninstall" Defender, but it is not on the list of installed programs, and when I try to install Defender, it says it is already installed and halts the install.

How can I fix this without reinstalling the OS?

I have both Vista and Win7 on a dual boot and both are doing the same thing. I really want Windows Defender because it has caught many malware and killed them all, better than anyother software I have ever tried in the past. I am also using Security Essential.

How can I fix this? All the solutions posted don't seem to work as writen.

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Answer

Reza Ameri

Volunteer Moderator

In Windows XP you could uninstall Windows Defender because it consider as application that you could install but in Windows Vista and Windows 7 it is part of Windows and you could NOT unistall it. However, you could disable it.

You also mention that you are using Microsoft Security Essentials, if that is the case then Windows Defender must be off and you don't need it , because Windows Defender is Anti-Spyware and Microsoft Security Essentials is Anti-Spyware+Anti-Virus.

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Answer

Reza Ameri

Volunteer Moderator

Thank you for your question, Microsoft Security Essentials is designed for Home user and Small Business up to 10 PCs. Therefore it won't support server products.

Requirements are Windows XP,Windows Vista and Windows 7 so far, have a look at :

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/resources.aspx?mkt=en-us&s=1

For more details. For server products such as Windows Server recommendation is Server Anti-Virus such as Forefront:

http://www.microsoft.com/forefront/en/us/default.aspx

Or any other Anti-virus that support server products.