Windows 10: Permanently Disable Windows Defender?

I think it's a glitch with this. You can try: first, click on "Turn System icons on or off" then click on "Customize notification icons" then it will show up on the list.

 

You can disable it is services.

 

That was the whole problem with this thread. OP could not just simply turn off the service. Please read post #3

 

No he was not using services but Group Policy. If you really want to it can be removed.

 

Solution: *Wink

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/5...dows-10-a.html

 

If you turn off and permanently disable WD with these registry tweaks, does it also stop the automatic updates coming in for WD as well?

 

Yes.. if WD is off you will not be receiving any updates. It's similar to installing a third party AV and you will be both turning off WD by doing this and stop all WD updates.

 

Thanks, good to know!
*Smile

 

Simple ways to turn off Windows Defender in W10.
1. Type Defender in search, turn off in Defender panel under settings.
2. Open All Settings, Update and Security, Windows Defender.

 

Microsoft probably would not like WD turned off on Builds that we are supposed to be testing..

 

When you install a third party AV defender gets turned off and I don't see any reason not to test them at this point. I don't think MS will care if you do this or not.

 

Necessary after installing Avast which is now updated for W10,
Normally another installed AV would shut down Defender, but in my case both were running together, hence above solution.

 

Just for the record, reg tweaks to disable WD, even when disabled, it still runs.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WdNisSvc]
"Start"=dword:00000004
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WinDefend]
"Start"=dword:00000004

Additionally, you can also delete the WD folder, just to be sure, takes ~500MB.

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\WindowDefender\

 

Thanks a hell of a lot! I didn't know it turned itself back on after disabling it in Settings, this am when I got up it had deleted something important. I can't afford this happening, even with "exclusions", cos it seems that once something gets swallowed into Defender, you can't get it out of quarantine.

I just did this, Can I get in there and shut off the service now, too? Ah, it's shut off now, but I wanna get rid of the little defender icon. Defender is the one thing left over from earlier versions of Windows I totally despise, although I did use it in Windows 8 for the longest time.

 

This is what I did:

Google and Download "Taskill.exe"

You might find it here:
Taskill Download - Softpedia


Make a folder such as C:\Taskill and put taskill.exe into it. Make a desktop/taskbar shortcut to it. Open up properties of shortcut and in the field that says "Target" type in the box: C:\Taskill\taskill.exe MSASCui.exe
-Click OK

Now if you have the notification icon option turned on for Windows Defender when you run the Taskill shortcut you should see it go away. Waiting to see if it turns itself back on but so far it hasn't. If anything, the shortcut to kill the process definitely makes things easier to deal with.

Hope that helps

-Andre