[SOLVED] Any downside to disabling this?

[LilyLoo]

Hi

I recently had a virus on my PC which I later found out was running via cmd.exe.

I have cleaned my PC and beefed up my security with better (paid) AV and Malwarebytes free.

I read that malware running on the command prompt and powershell are on the rise (affecting me too!) and harder to stop so I took the decision to disable them both in the registry so they cannot be opened. If I ever needed to I could by changing the registry back but I wondered....

Is there any downside to this? I hardly ever need them myself (never used powershell) but are there any other tasks which this might affect?

Thanks

Lily

 

[Colif]

its extreme but no less extreme than disabling parts of windows.

I have found viruses on my PC but never installed one. I found them in old download folders for files I never used. Now days the only files I download are motherboard manuals from the makers who aren't nice enough to host them on their own sites. Excluding windows updates I can go months without downloading anything to install.

i use protection as in answering questions here, I never know where I might end up.

 

[britechguy]

its extreme but no less extreme than disabling parts of windows.

I presume that this comment is in response to my latest offering in regard to using a standard account for web browsing, etc.

I just want to make clear that you and I are on the same page with regard to disabling parts of Windows: Don't do it!!

I've been in computing since the mid-1980s, and it never ceases to amaze me how many people will believe that "Uncle Jerry" or "this kid down the street," knows more about what does and does not need to run as part of an OS than the people who create and maintain it. Microsoft, like all other OS makers, gives end users scads of controls available to them through the settings interface. Feel free to knock yourself out, if you must, tweaking that way and making careful notes of what you have tweaked, as very often later you want to use something that's directly dependent on something you chose to disable via settings. But at least then it's a simple matter to go back and enable it again. Hacking the registry and messing with group policies on your typical home machine, with typical home machine end user knowledge, is an almost sure path to madness, eventually.

I tell all my clients that whenever they get a new Windows 10 machine the first thing they should do is to review each and every Privacy setting and tweak to suit their needs and desires. I'm not against customizing. I am against doing "odd surgeries" to accomplish that.