Disabling & Enabling Windows Defender in Vista

If you have a better (which is probably the case) realtime antispyware tool than Windows Defender, it would make sense to stop Windows Defender from loading at startup which makes startup times longer. And in addition you are wasting value resources have multiple tools running and they could be conflicting with each other. Stopping Windows Defender is a little more complex than it should be due to how Microsoft forced it to be part of the base Windows Vista installation.


Disabling Windows Defender

Copy the bold text below to notepad. Save it as DisableWD.reg to your desktop. Be sure the "Save as" type is set to "all files" Once you have saved it double click it and allow it to merge with the registry.

Make sure that you receive a success message about adding the above
to the registry. If you do not get a success message, it definitely did not work.

If you receive any popup warnings from protection software or User Account Control, make sure that you allow this change to be made to you registry to change the startup items.

• Now open Windoww Defender by clicking Start, All Programs and select Window Defender
• Click Tools
• Click Options
• At the very bottom of the next form uncheck the option that says Use real-time protection (recommended)
• Now click on the Save button
• Close Windows Defender
• Reboot your computer

Windows Defender should no longer load at startup.


If you ever decide that you want to enable Windows Defender again, here are the steps to do that.


Enabling Windows Defender

Copy the bold text below to notepad. Save it as EnableWD.reg to your desktop. Be sure the "Save as" type is set to "all files" Once you have saved it double click it and allow it to merge with the registry.

Make sure that you receive a success message about adding the above
to the registry. If you do not get a success message, it definitely did not work.

If you receive any popup warnings from protection software or User Account Control, make sure that you allow this change to be made to you registry to change the startup items.

• Now open Windoww Defender by clicking Start, All Programs and select Window Defender
• Click Tools
• Click Options
• At the very bottom of the next form check the option that says Use real-time protection (recommended)
• Now click on the Save button
• Close Windows Defender
• Reboot your computer

Windows Defender should load at startup and provide active protection.