News Defendnot tool pitched as 'an even funnier way’ to disable Windows Defender

[Admin]

Defendnot disables Windows Defender without replacing it with a genuine rival antivirus (AV) product.

Defendnot tool pitched as 'an even funnier way’ to disable Windows Defender : Read more

 

[Jabberwocky79]

Just curious as to why someone would deliberate disable all AV protection including Defender? What purpose does this program serve?

 

[USAFRet]

Just curious as to why someone would deliberate disable all AV protection including Defender? What purpose does this program serve?

"The AV is sucking up too many resources, and I neeed muh extra 2 FPS!!!"
Yes, someone will say that.

 

[Math Geek]

some people for any number of reasons chose to not run an AV. be it a test machine or their daily driver.

true 99.999999999% will run one and probably should. it's the best/easiest way to protect your machine from the user's own mistakes. i'll never deny that fact.

but MS has decided that EVERYONE absolutely will run an AV whether they want to or not. so this and many other ways exist to disable this requirement for those who do not wish to partake. clearly enough people wish to not use one since so many ways exist to disable the requirement.

again i 100% agree that the average user should use one, but also 100% disagree that "average user" means every single person ever to sit in front of a computer. if you wish to take the risk on your personal system and not run an AV program, then MS should not stand in your way. it's what many many people hate about what windows has become. it is no longer an OS someone can adjust to be what they need. it is now a one size fits all method to provide MS with as much data to sell as possible

again you don't have to agree and may love everything about windows, but again enough people exist that don't like it, that there are many ways to disable/remove/tweak windows to try and take some sort of control back and make it what i need vs what MS tells me i will have.

you don't have to agree, or approve, but that does not mean you are the final answer and all must abide by your wishes.

 

[USAFRet]

some people for any number of reasons chose to not run an AV. be it a test machine or their daily driver.

true 99.999999999% will run one and probably should. it's the best/easiest way to protect your machine from the user's own mistakes. i'll never deny that fact.

but MS has decided that EVERYONE absolutely will run an AV whether they want to or not. so this and many other ways exist to disable this requirement for those who do not wish to partake. clearly enough people wish to not use one since so many ways exist to disable the requirement.

again i 100% agree that the average user should use one, but also 100% disagree that "average user" means every single person ever to sit in front of a computer. if you wish to take the risk on your personal system and not run an AV program, then MS should not stand in your way. it's what many many people hate about what windows has become. it is no longer an OS someone can adjust to be what they need. it is now a one size fits all method to provide MS with as much data to sell as possible

again you don't have to agree and may love everything about windows, but again enough people exist that don't like it, that there are many ways to disable/remove/tweak windows to try and take some sort of control back and make it what i need vs what MS tells me i will have.

you don't have to agree, or approve, but that does not mean you are the final answer and all must abide by your wishes.

The problem is....
If it is "optional", then people who should be running it do not, on advice from people who think they know (but don't).

And those subsequently infected systems impact the rest of us.
See WannaCry.

 

[jlake3]

Just curious as to why someone would deliberate disable all AV protection including Defender? What purpose does this program serve?

There's arguably a research angle, as the backdoor killswitch they used is not publicly documented. Knowing how it works may help develop defenses. Also, if you're experimenting with something on a sacrificial machine in a controlled environment, you might wanna turn everything off and just study what happens.

I'm not sure what happens if you try to use a home version of Windows in some type of automation project where it has no internet connection, but if it gets angry about not being able to update the AV, this may shut it up?

If for some reason you are running an AV that isn't signaling to Windows that it's present properly and they're both trying to run, this could allow you to shut down Defender so they don't clash. Or even more theoretically, someone could build an AV without having to sign Microsoft's NDA and without having infringing code stolen from a commercial AV?

Or maybe you've built a machine just for hardcore overclocking leaderboards, and you want to kill off any possible process that could take away from your CPU benchmark score.

Very, very, VERY niche and most people should absolutely not disable all AV protection, but it is neat that it exists.

 

[Konomi]

Just curious as to why someone would deliberate disable all AV protection including Defender? What purpose does this program serve?

Probably has more use than TH's "recommended reading" popup.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

There’s a new tool available for folk who want to disable Windows Defender without replacing it with a rival antivirus (AV) product.

Those people fall into one of two camps: Bad actors who want to create a more convincing fake AV to trick people who don't need to use a computer, and people who don't need to use a computer.

 

[rluker5]

A lot of people are probably too young to remember the days before Windows Vista when restoring your infected PC from disc was a normal occurrence and if you wanted to spend the big bucks you went with Norton or McAfee and had to watch your system routinely slow to a crawl for quite some time due to their schedule.

Defender is a small price to pay.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

A lot of people are probably too young to remember the days before Windows Vista when restoring your infected PC from disc was a normal occurrence and if you wanted to spend the big bucks you went with Norton or McAfee and had to watch your system routinely slow to a crawl for quite some time due to their schedule.

Defender is a small price to pay.

Some people are old enough to remember when Windows Restore would backup and restore viruses and AV programs couldn't touch them.

 

[BFG-9000]

To be fair, Defender is still ridiculously slow if you plug in a slow flash drive or connect to a slow NAS with thousands of files on it--Explorer flashes the contents then blanks the window (I can understand not letting you click on anything but why hide the filenames?) until they show up, one by one slowly. And that's regardless of how fast your system is.

Antivirus isn't needed on any computer that will only be used offline, and just as with 9x and XP, I am starting to remove MSE/Defender from all of my Windows 7 installations because the definition updates haven't worked since February anyway. Feature updates aren't necessary offline either + I think I liked 1511 best and will probably go to that after Windows 10 EOL as well.

The original System Restore from Windows ME is famous for not working at all, no viruses needed to break it.

 

[USAFRet]

To be fair, Defender is still ridiculously slow if you plug in a slow flash drive or connect to a slow NAS with thousands of files on it

I wouldn't call that a fail of Defender.

Any tool is going to be slow, when you try to scan a slow device.

 

[BFG-9000]

Yes of course, it's because the drive is so slow. But why waste time scanning the same offline files each time that you already know are clean?

 

[USAFRet]

Yes of course, it's because the drive is so slow. But why waste time scanning the same offline files each time that you already know are clean?

It doesn't/can't know if it is the same files?

 

[BFG-9000]

The whole point of on-access scanning is the file could've been changed since it was last scanned, so any antivirus has no choice but to scan it again every time you open the folder or share. This is an understandable and worthwhile penalty if you are using the PC online at all.

Now it does make sense to occasionally update definitions and scan your offline files too, because things the older definitions didn't know to look for are always added to the new ones, but on every access is excessive when the files were made by me rather than downloaded, and my offline PCs are really slow too. I mean I still have Pentium I computers without MMX on a LAN, using WINS rather than DNS.

Windows Security and Maintenance didn't even track the presence of an antivirus until build 1703 so I guess this tool isn't needed with 1511 anyway.

 

[flowingbass]

Probably has more use than TH's "recommended reading" popup.

Its a full page pop up/slide up. First time i saw it thought it was some bullcrap. Now it's just annoying. Having to tap twice to read comments.

 

[Nikolay Mihaylov]

Defender has already started to detect and quarantine it as a Trojan

But it's a Trojan made by the Trojans

 

[Krieger-San]

There’s a new tool available for folk who want to disable Windows Defender without replacing it with a rival antivirus (AV) product.

Might I interest you in a copy of Linux Mint? Or perhaps Ubuntu? Maybe even ReactOS? I'm sure one of those options would rid you of said pesky Windows Defender... 😉

 

[sjkpublic]

At some level one has to ask whether there is an issue with the OS itself. At another level the general public is gulible and needs protection. And at a more deeper level WD is collecting info and sending it to the mother ship.