Completely Uninstalling Windows Defender

This is from -Raymond.cc-

Completely Uninstalling Windows Defender

For most users, simply turning off Windows Defender or disabling it via the Services Control Panel should be enough to stop it running. If for whatever reason you’re still having some sort of issue or are determined to remove Defender completely from the system, unfortunately is isn’t possible using Programs and Features or the Turn Windows features on or off window.

Although there is no official way to cleanly uninstall Defender, it is possible to remove the service, Control Panel entry, other related registry entries and all the files and folders manually so Defender is unofficially removed from the system. This does present its own set of problems though as the registry keys, files and folders are all protected with enhanced permissions and you have to take ownership of them all. Also, once removed, you can’t re-install Defender again because it isn’t a separate package.

As there seems to be no tool around to do it for you, we’ve decided to create our own little utility that can delete all the necessary protected registry keys, files and folders at the click of a button. Currently the program works great on Windows Vista and 7′s Defender, we may include full Windows 8 Defender support in future if people request it.

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Link to Raymond Article and download

 

Thanks for the link, while I have seen it previously, other might find it useful.

I'm tempted to do this, as I have no use for Windows Defender due to occasional slowdowns caused by it. I have the service disabled, but whenever I have serious problems with Windows and I use for example tweaking.com
s Windows Repair it enables the service again.

 

You do know that Windows 8 Defender is totally different from the program with the same name on Windows 7 and Vista?

 

I've not used WD in a very long time, and I had some time to kill, so I tried it just to see if I could.

The link for the Windows Defender Uninstaller just takes ya to a page that tries to get ya to sign up for something called Dropbox, at least for me it did.

I finally got it uninstalled manually. Some of the registry keys were stubborn but got 'em all deleted with RunAsSystem. There was a sub-folder in the Windows Defender program folder and when I changed permissions for the program folder the sub-folder didn't change. It took me forever to figure it out, but when I did, I changed the sub-folder permissions independently and then they both deleted. In the end I recovered about 200 mb.

 

Turn Windows Defender on or off:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/...on-off#turn-windows-defender-on-off=windows-7

Windows Defender ships with the Operating System - there is no removing the application. You can disable it where it lies dormant.

 

It seems to have removed it from my Win 7 machine. No ill side effects yet. If there are then I'll just restore an image in less than 5 minutes.

I used to remove Windows Defender whenever I would slipstream and customize Vista using vLite. I don't recall it causing me any problems back then due to removing it.

Btw, the author of vLite and nLite has recently updated nLite after a little hiatus. He also states that he's working on a tool(s) for Win 7 +, and that to expect it in months and not years.
http://www.nliteos.com/

 

Thanks, removed successfully. Gives me more Control Panel space if nothing else.