Cannot turn off Real-Time Protection in Microsoft Defender Antivirus

I have run SFC scan and tried Malwarebytes without success.

What do you mean by this?
Are you looking for a virus?
Why do you want to turn off Windows Defender if you have no other Antivirus protection??

Is the ability to turn off real time protection in Home available? It certainly is is Pro.

BTW... Turn off antivirus protection in Windows Security

Thanks for clarifying. No clue as to what the OP's issue is.

BTW I just tried mine (turning off RTP) to make sure it was still working on Pro....

Minion677 said:

Yes, as I said in the original post, I have already looked at a lot of threads about this problem and have already tried SFC and DISM without luck

It would be nice if this Windows security suite had the ability to uninstall and reinstall. I wonder if that would fix the problem.

If all else fails you could try do a Windows repair ... Link below.

Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade

Minion677 said:

I am unable to turn off Real-time protection (or any other settings ie Cloud-delivered protection, Automatic sample submission, etc) in Microsoft Defender Antivirus.

When I click the toggle button to turn it from On to Off, it quickly reverts back to the On position. The same thing happens with every option on that page. I also cannot add any exclusions to Windows Defender.

Also, my Windows Firewall is Off, and I cannot turn it On. The same thing happens where it immediately reverts back to Off. Basically every setting in my Windows Security is unable to be changed.

In reading other threads about this issue, they all talk about adjusting settings in the group policy editor, but this is not present on Windows 10 Home which I have. I also do not have any other antivirus software installed. I have run SFC scan and tried Malwarebytes without success.

Thanks for your help...

Do you have any other antivirus programs or firewalls installed? What is the release version of Windows 10 Home you are running? There is a recent Windows update that causes Defender Real Time protection force activate whenever there are no antivirus programs detected.

See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/ans...p-policie.html
and
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...bleantispyware

Here is a quote from Microsoft regarding this:

DisableAntiSpyware is intended to be used by OEMs and IT Pros to disable Microsoft Defender Antivirus and deploy another antivirus product during deployment. This is a legacy setting that is no longer necessary as Microsoft Defender antivirus automatically turns itself off when it detects another antivirus program. This setting is not intended for consumer devices, and we’ve decided to remove this registry key. This change is included with Microsoft Defender Antimalware platform versions 4.18.2007.8 and higher KB 4052623. Enterprise E3 and E5 editions will be released at a future date. Note that this setting is protected by tamper protection. Tamper protection is available in all Home and Pro editions of Windows 10 version 1903 and higher and is enabled by default. The impact of the DisableAntiSpyware removal is limited to Windows 10 versions prior to 1903 using Microsoft Defender Antivirus. This change does not impact third party antivirus connections to the Windows Security app. Those will still work as expected....

File location changes

This update makes the following binary location changes.

Affected component	Old location	New location
Windows Defender Antivirus service (MsMpEng.exe) Network Realtime Inspection service (NisSrv.exe)	%ProgramFiles%\Windows Defender	%ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Platform\<Version>
Windows Defender Antivirus drivers	%Windir%\System32\drivers	%Windir%\System32\drivers\wd

I can help you modify your settings and take ownership of the necessary files to ensure Windows Defender does not run even if you do not have an antivirus software. However, this functionality was not intended so it might cause future issues when there are new updates from Microsoft. There is a risk in doing this and, as always, ensure that your files are backed up and you have restore points created.


Here is a picture of what my current settings are (you can see antivirus is disabled). I have no other antivirus program installed. (running Windows 10 Pro - may be possible with Home - if not possible you can find upgrades for cheap)



As for your firewall issue, I am not sure on that. Maybe you already have another firewall installed?