How to stop “windows defender antivirus service”?

dalchina said:

Hi, how do you do that?

One way would be to install a 3rd party AV. I have Avast installed:


Have you tried this?
Turn On or Off Windows Defender Real-time Protection in Windows 10

Why do you wish to do this?

What I need here is to disable the service itself.
For example, the “windows update” service can be disabled by selecting disable from the drop down menu.

jamal numan said:

Windows 10.0.18362.778: How to stop “windows defender antivirus service”?

I couldn’t figure out how to stop “windows defender antivirus service”

You can try this free program and it works good. Defender Control v1.6

Tutman said:

You can try this free program and it works good. Defender Control v1.6

Many thanks for the help.

Are there any steps that I can apply on windows configuration without the need to install 3^rd party software?

Macboatmaster said:

1. I would repeat the same question as has been asked.

2. Why would you want to stop something, that is dealt with automatically by the installation of a 3rd party AV program

3.I would advise you that if you try and disable it through services or some other means you will most likely succeed on the face of it, but you will actually not succeed - as you will find that either your change in the service does not last OR you will begin to receive problem notifications.

4. It is a fact known by many people, but certainly not by the majority of home users, that on Windows 10 especially, many services are more deeply interlinked than on previous editions of Windows.
The setup of the OS and its file structure are constantly monitored by the deep internal file structure of the OS, hidden items amongst the registry etc and values in the registry blocked from the user - modifying them are responsible for this constant monitoring.

5. I do not know if the updates mention you make on your post 3 is simply an example or you have actually done so
I realise it shows disabled, perhaps only as an example, but manual triggered on the services list.

I would say that - the updates change is not good practice either.

6. Finally that is my best advise and indeed as you may have seen on the link from this sites tutorial, provided by my colleague dalchina - there are other ways of turning it off temporarily, suitable if you do not have a 3rd party AV

Thank you guys for the help.

I thought that it should be easy to permanently disable “windows defender antivirus service” with some configurations at the level of windows
It appears that I’m left with the 3^rd party option in order to perform this

jamal numan said:

[FONT="]Many thanks for the help.[/FONT]

Are there any steps that I can apply on windows configuration without the need to install 3^rd party software?

Yes unless you go in and turn off the policies or use the third party software I told you about (The easiest way!) it will turn itself on unless you have another AV that windows identifies. And you should have some AntiVirus installed!

Tutman said:

Yes unless you go in and turn off the policies or use the third party software I told you about (The easiest way!) it will turn itself on unless you have another AV that windows identifies. And you should have some AntiVirus installed!

It appears that playing with windows policies never get the “windows defender antivirus service” to be permanently disabled.