Permanently disable Windows Defender in Windows 10 – Windows Defender is the security solution developed by Microsoft to protect Windows users from malware. This program, which is activated by default at the end of Windows installation, monitors all system files and notifies the user whenever any of them is considered malware, however, most users prefer to install security suites of third parties that offer greater protection to users than this Microsoft software.
Windows 8 users, who also had Windows Defender, could easily disable this security tool to dedicate 100% of the resources to their third-party tool without conflicts between them, however, Windows 10 users did not they can deactivate this security tool, and although it is “paused” when we install another antivirus, conflicts can sometimes appear between them.
By default, from the Windows 10 configuration panel we can temporarily deactivate Windows Defender, although the system warns us that if it is deactivated for a long time, it will be automatically activated again, by force.
Fortunately, there are several ways to completely disable Windows Defender and prevent this security suite from constantly running in the background, although these processes must be done manually.
While options 1 and 2 are completely manual, and quite complex for less experienced users (that’s why we are not going to delve into them) the third option is a fully automatic process that will deactivate the security tool simply by following its simple wizard, fully automated.
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Different ways to disable Windows Defender in Windows 10
1º – Deactivate Windows Defender from Windows group policies
Using advanced group policy settings, we can disable this security software. For this we will follow the following steps:
- We open the start menu (or Cortana) and write gpedit.msc.
- In the window that appears we look for the path: Local Computer Policy> Computer Configuration> Administrative Templates> Windows Components> Windows Defender .
- Here we will see a directive called « Deactivate Windows Defender «.
- We mark this directive as “activated” and save the changes.
When we restart the computer, the Microsoft security software will be disabled by default.
2º – Deactivate Windows Defender from the Windows registry
Similar to option 1, we can disable this tool by editing an entry in the Windows registry. For this we simply must follow the following steps:
- We open the start menu (or Cortana) and write regedit.exe
- We look for the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Policies \ Microsoft \ Windows Defender
- We look for the entry DisableAntiSpyware (if it is not, we must create a new 32-bit DWORD value and call it with that name).
- We open this entry and assign it the value 1.
- We save the changes and restart the computer. When you reboot the security software will be permanently disabled.
3º – Use the NoDefender tool
As a third option, and more recommended, we can use the NoDefender tool . This tool will allow us to deactivate Windows Defender in a few clicks with a simple step-by-step wizard that will guide us through the process.
Once the application is downloaded, we run it and we will see a window similar to the following.
The first thing we will do is click on the ” Open Windows Defender Settings ” button to open the configuration window that we have seen before and deactivate the 3 options that appear in it to “pause” antivirus protection.
Once done, click on «Next» to continue with the wizard. Now we will see a second step like the following.
The only thing we have left to do is click on the ” Disable Windows Defender” button that appears to completely disable Windows Defender in our Windows 10. Once done, we can click on “Next” again to continue.
All ready. The Windows 10 security tool has been completely disabled and will not automatically re-enable as it has done until now. A simple tool that will avoid having to play with group policies and registration in order to deactivate this option, which, as a general rule, should be possible from the Windows 10 configuration panel.
Be sure to visit our section of tutorials and tricks for Windows.
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