6 ms·
Now please tell me how to remove Defender.
by Eisenstein 2y ago
Now please tell me how to remove Defender.
- andrewxdiamond 2y agoI have to ask what motivates that. Defender has been extremely unproblematic and pretty good as far as MS software goes, for my experience at least.
- tredre3 2y agoDefender slows down build times significantly. You can set exclusions of course, but it does get tedious because every time you have a new project you need to add exclusions for its folder and the toolchain. Then every time a toolchain is updated (eg .../gcc/11.5 changes to gcc/11.5.2 you have to enter the 20 new exe exclusions and of course windows won't let you mass delete the old ones so it's click->confirm->click->confirm x50). I might not do it myself but I can see why someone would just say "enough is enough".
- felipelemos 2y agoHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Exclusions\Paths
- andyayers 2y agoOr https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-endpoint/microsoft-defender-endpoint-antivirus-performance-mode https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-endpoint/microsof... (DevDrive + Defender's "performance mode")
- gtsteve 2y agoYou can use the powershell command Add-MPPreference -ExclusionPath[0] and ship a script with your app if you want. I do the same for Terraform providers - whenever a new version comes out, for a time the process can be randomly killed as I suppose a process that spawns a child process that starts talking to lots of endpoints looks somewhat suspicious. [0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/defender/add-mppreference?view=windowsserver2022-ps https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/defender...
- RockRobotRock 2y agoJetBrains does it for you with one click when you create a new project.
- com2kid 2y agoIn the old days at MSFT, developers had a separate HD for code and builds that was completely excluded from virus scanners. Sometimes a big blunt hammer does the trick!
- Eisenstein 2y agoIt adds a non trivial amount of time for each file access.
- maccard 2y agoI see about a 100x slowdown on some applications[0] and IO heavy operations with defender in win11. It's unbelieveable how slow it is. I was a huge proponent of it in Win10, but I'm finding it hard to do so now. [0] The software I'm using does a scan over a few hundred thousand files to read file headers. Without windows defender it takes about 30 seconds, but with defender it takes about 300.
- mananaysiempre 2y agoThat’s 10× though, not 100× (still a lot for something you can’t turn off). Typo?
- maccard 2y agoYes, typo! My bad and I can’t edit.
- voidwtf 2y agoThe answer in this scenario is to exempt that application and/or folder. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. In my environment we have to add exceptions for Developers git folders for the realtime scanning for a similar reason. Apps with large numbers of small files or high frequency writes of smalls files, like temp files during the build process, need to be exempted unless you’re willing to pay the performance penalty for the security.
- maccard 2y agoI don’t understand why, but I have an exemption for that folder and I’ve disabled real time scanning. It still shows the slowdown on first launch. The only thing that works is disabling windows defender entirely. I’ve been through the troubleshooting loop a few times with this.
- xnyan 2y agoOut of curiosity, does Dev Drive do anything for you? https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dev-drive/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dev-drive/
- Suppafly 2y agoI'm generally in favor of Defender, but it can definitely cause performance issues, especially in relationship to other windows processes like windows update. If you keep your system regularly updated, it's less of a problem, but I often help people who basically never update or leave their computer on long enough for Defender to do complete scans. After a certain point it basically becomes impossible to update because defender fights update and chrome and discord and etc etc etc, for access to the files and you end up with the cpu and harddrive maxed out for a couple of days before everything completes.
- nyanpasu64 2y agoI've gotten it to work on Windows 10 by booting into live Linux and renaming the Windows Defender folder in Program Files. No clue if it would work on 11.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y agoI am surprised that ever worked. I was confident Win10 did verification that system files were in place and matched a hash or some other integrity mechanism.
- userbinator 2y agoYou can ask it to with things like SFC but fortunately it's not that locked-down yet... and of course you can always patch those checks out if the OS itself isn't running to interfere with you.
- vanchor3 2y agoThey put in a lot of effort to prevent you from deleting the main executable (you the user that is, malware can probably delete it just fine using the usual methods) however one day I discovered you can delete the .dll files from its folder and it no longer runs, and Windows does not do anything to try and fix it.
- blibble 2y agoyou can also set the permissions on it so SYSTEM can't execute it
- IntelMiner 2y agoRemoving core parts of Windows is not a good idea
- hulitu 2y agoLetting them run is also not a good idea. Especially when they bring no benefit. (see ransomware for example)
- MengerSponge 2y ago"Erase disk and install Ubuntu" https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-ubuntu-desktop#6-type-of-installation https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-ubuntu-desktop#6-type-o...
- CoastalCoder 2y agoAnd then Clippy sneaks up behind you, and whispers menacingly in your ear, "It looks like you're installing an operating system."
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 2y agoYou can reliably disable it with Group Policy Editor. At least on Win10, not sure about Win11.
- Kye 2y agoThat's only available on Pro.
- crazysim 2y agohttps://gist.github.com/lelegard/8da0b20cc35708852c14fcf899651204 https://gist.github.com/lelegard/8da0b20cc35708852c14fcf8996... Just run Get-ChildItem @( "C:\Windows\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package.mum", "C:\Windows\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package.mum" ) | ForEach-Object { dism.exe /online /norestart /add-package:"$_" }
- mananaysiempre 2y agoOn Win11, it reenables itself after a short while using a system service, in true Robin Hood & Friar Tuck malware[1] fashion. [1] https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/xerox.txt https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/xerox.txt
- hulitu 2y ago> You can reliably disable it with Group Policy Editor. It does not work. You can disable _some things_ , but not the whole.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- efilife 2y agoI use a custom windows build with defender removed, you can find them on any windows modding site
- hulitu 2y agoBoot into linux, rename defender folders.
- barchar 2y agoIf you use windows server you can just type `Uninstall-WindowsFeature WindowsDefender` (or similar, that might be the wrong feature name). If you use client windows there are two options, first you can disable "anti-tamper" and then disable the defender services with the TrustedInstaller token, this takes a few tries and often does not work on modern versions of windows or while defender is running (you can do it by editing the registry from safe-mode or linux). Another option is to enable "Smart App Control" this will permanently disable defender but you will only be able to run signed executables, and to turn it on you must have never run any unsigned executables in the past (or reformat your hard drive). There's an app called DefenderControl that will disable it, as well, using various methods. You can also install some other anti-virus software, but you can't make your own -- they need to be signed with a special key. A fun bit of trivia: defender doesn't turn itself on until after the "out of box experience" is finished, under the rationale that users can't install any malware until they can use the computer. Thus you can run defender disabling scripts/programs from a customized installer without them getting nuked by defender.