zlacker

>>mconle+(OP)
Is Windows Defender even worth enabling?

It eats up a lot of CPU. It doesn’t seem like much help in a default update enabled system where you are using a regular user account instead of an administrator account.

In addition, anti-virus and real time scanning is itself potential surface area for an exploit (for example a few years back there was an exploit based on Norton antivirus email scanner).

>>RcouF1+ge
I don't think you can disable it anymore in recent versions of Windows unless you install another AV software.

>>Narish+ft
You can disable it. First you have to disable the tamper protection and real time protection in the GUI. Now the real time protection will come back automatically in some time, unless you do the following.

If you have a Pro version of Windows there is a group policy setting for it. [1]

If you have Home, you can achieve the same effect by manually tweaking the registry. [2]

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[1] Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Defender Antivirus > Real-time Protection

[2] HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Real-Time Protection\"DisableRealtimeMonitoring"=dword:00000001

>>Strom+Nw
Thank you, I just disabled it on my fully offline game system. Hopefully a few games that previously crashed will work now :/.