Even without Defender or ANY anti-malware Win 10 keeps deleting exes

Several utilities from Nirsoft.net are known to produce malware false positives. But I want to use some of them anyway, so I knew I'd have to disable my Avast anti-malware tool as well as Windows Defender. I did all that, but whenever I try to install or merely extract one such .exe file, it always and immediately gets deleted!

So I disabled Defender completely in the Group Editor, rebooted, and tried again. Same result.

So I put Avast in Passive mode, rebooted, and tried again. Same result.

So I completely uninstalled Avast, rebooted, and tried again. Same result.

So I tried disabling my firewall, even though I'd disabled all anti-malware long ago. Same result!

How can this be happening with no anti-malware running at all? I re-downloaded both the installer version and the portable zip version a few times, but after installing it, the .exe file immediately disappears. Likewise when I try extracting the .exe from the zip file -- it never shows up. I've tested the integrity of the files and they're all perfect.

The NirSoft utility I'm trying to use is called WebBrowserPassView. I'm struggling to export the login passwords from the Chrome browser. Many sites claim you can export Chrome's passwords if you change one or two Flags and press the "Export passwords" button, but that absolutely does not wok for me. When I follow those directions, Chrome reports that there ARE no saved passwords, which is undeniably false.

So after trying several procedures that all failed, I turned to WebBrowserPassView, which always "magically" vanishes every time!

Why is this happening, even with no anti-malware running?

Just FYI: The exact same thing is happening to a different Nirsoft utility, so this isn't just about a single executable...

Remember: MS always knows better than you what is appropriate for you.

See your Defender Scan History, you can restore item from quarantine. Or use Exclusions option to add file or folder.



Alternatively, you can:
- reboot into safe mode
- import the following reg file (it disables Defender completely)
- reboot into normal mode
- install any other antivirus software (Avira Free + BGPKiller recommended)

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SecurityHealthService]
"Start"=dword:00000004
; original value 0x2

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WinDefend]
"Start"=dword:00000004
; original value 0x2