If you turn off Real-Time Protection how long before "it turns back on

In the Windows Defender Security Center you can turn off Real-Time Protection, but you are told that you can do so only for a short period before it turns back on automatically. How long is that short period? I turned it off and after 50 minutes it was still off. I then powered off the machine, rebooted, and Real-Time Protection was still off. I can't find the length of the "short period" documented anywhere. Anyone else have any experience with this?

I have no idea how long before real-time protection is turn back on. I have batch script that will turn off Windows Defender if anyone need this script i have attached to this post.

Josey Wales said:

No, and I would not want to place my PC at risk to find out.

The laptop I tested this on was behind a firewall on our router, and I was working on local files and one or two Microsoft sites, not browsing anywhere hazardous, so I don't think I was really in any danger.

as long as you are scanning EVERYTHING you download before installing or opening it yes you can disable real time protection. i have both bitdefender total security and malwarebytes and both have all protection set to manual, and i've never had a issue as long as i do what i said above.

xXWhackerXx said:

as long as you are scanning EVERYTHING you download before installing or opening it yes you can disable real time protection. i have both bitdefender total security and malwarebytes and both have all protection set to manual, and i've never had a issue as long as i do what i said above.

There was a time when I too believed that passive virus scans were good enough and that real time protection was just for people too careless or too lazy to scan all downloads. And there was a time when that was true. But that time is long past. Modern malware authors are very professional, well funded, and highly motivated. Malware authors know all about file scanners and have developed a wide variety of ways to evade them. To combat this malware scanners developed ever more sophisticated scanning methods, while malware authors developed ever more sophisticated methods of evading them. Most security experts believe that malware is winning.

There are many viruses that can not be detected by any known file scanning method and can only be detected on a running system, by real time scanning. Even that is no guarantee but it does give you another layer of protection. God security always consists of multiple layers of protection even when one layer has no known vulnerabilities. One may be developed tomorrow.

Nothing is certain with computer security. Malware has been found on highly trusted websites and even in commercial software. The popular product "CCleaner", used and recommended by many members of this forum, was recently infected and effected several million downloads. An infected computer may show no symptoms of any kind. I believe most symptoms are unintentional but due to bugs in the malware or interactions with other software or malware.

As for how long before real time scanning is turned back on: I don't think you will ever see any official documentation regarding this. Microsoft doesn't want anyone to rely on this. Being undocumented the time period is subject to change at any time without notice. It may not even be consistent in any one OS installation. Introducing a random factor would be trivially simple for the developer. You may see this mentioned in some blog but the information may be obsolete even before it was published.

LMiller7 i stand by what i said. not going to debate it.

Do not EVER turn real-time protection OFF. As for the OP question: As soon as you restart the protection will be back ON.

Can we please get an answer to the question:
What is the duration of a short time?
... as it pertains to Windows Defenders "Real-time protection" message?

Jacob Klein said:

Can we please get an answer to the question:
What is the duration of a short time?
... as it pertains to Windows Defenders "Real-time protection" message?

All we can really know is that real time protection will turn itself back on after a short but unspecified time period. This time period has not been documented and I don't believe it ever will be, and I don't think it should be. We have no way of knowing if this time period is a fixed or a random value, or one dependent on some other factor. And the details could change at the next update. It will be enabled after a restart.

Real time protection will disable itself if a third party AV product is detected. For reasons which should be obvious the details of how this works are undocumented. Details of when and how real time protection is enabled and disabled are of considerable interest to malware authors. It is best to keep them guessing.

To a computer user this doesn't really matter. Just keep real time protection enabled and it isn't an issue.