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News hardware & software 20 August 2020, 19:38

author: Bart Swiatek

Microsoft Just Made Disabling Windows Defender Harder

Microsoft has made changes to the Windows Defender antivirus program that make it difficult to switch it off permanently on a computer with Windows 10.

Windows Defender has received a potentially bothersome update.

IN A NUTSHELL:

  1. The latest update for Windows Defender has made it more difficult to disable the program permanently - the developers have removed the registry entry used for this;
  2. We can still disable the antivirus using an additional program.

ghacks.net reports that with the latest update for Windows Defender, Microsoft has made changes to it that make it difficult to deactivate the app permanently on a computer running Windows 10. The administrator can deactivate protection in real time, but only temporarily - the system will turn it on automatically.

In the past, you could find the DisableAntiSpyware key in the Windows 10 registry, which enabled the system administrator to disable Windows Defender. However, it seems that with the latest patch, developers decided to remove this tool. Deactivating this antivirus is now a bit more complicated - according to the editors of the German website Deskmodder, this can be done using an additional program such as Defender Control or Configure Defender.

It is not known what is the purpose of the modification introduced by Microsoft's programmers. The change won't matter much to most users - if they use Windows Defender, they shouldn't turn it off, and installing another antivirus usually automatically deactivates Microsoft's anti-virus. However, it cannot be ruled out that for some reason we will want to turn off Windows Defender for a longer period of time (e.g. because of conflicts between programs or if an external antivirus does not do so) - at such moments, the latest version of the application may prove problematic.

It is worth noting that this update has also introduced another significant change - tampering with the hosts system file is now considered harmful if it contains entries related to some Microsoft servers (e.g. those to which telemetry data is sent from our computer).

  1. Microsoft - official website