Windows Defender Is Becoming the Powerful Antivirus That Windows 10 Needs

It was not. I have seen many articles claiming that it would be defaulted to on for new PCs so I was surprised it was off.

@Spartan
I actually did temporarily install a 3rd party product and could not perceive a difference in performance. On older machines yes, but in this case nothing noticeable.

 

I turned on Memory Integrity but does it still work if i am not using MS Defender.

 

A far as I know, yes. On a related note, mine sometimes turned itself off for no apparent reason while using WD, but that hasn't happened since I migrated to a SSD. I think the slowness of my old 5200 rpm HDD caused it to timeout during boot. (WD is still heavy for me on an SSD, but I think that's due to only having 4 GB of RAM with shared graphics.)

 

I see it's off on a new PC here too (10th gen Intel Win 10 Pro). Also on a slightly older 8th gen Win 10 Home.

What is the recommendation? How long before one is confident 'it works'?

I am reluctant to turn it on, I saw someone couldn't (re)boot ...

 

I have a third generation Intel and just turned on Memory Integrity today. It stayed on after restart so might not be any problems.

 

I've wondered as well how long it can be on before calling it working. So far no issues. I run a daily disk image so I'm not too worried about something going wrong.

@Dragon1952
I'm surprised you can enable it on a third gen. I have some fourth gen PCs here that won't allow it.

 

This and DEP for system components are the only hardware-based security I have right now. No Trusted Platform Module (sold separately), Secure Boot, Spectre/Meltdown mitigations, etc.

I have to check this periodically to ensure it's toggled "on," particularly after a big update. No, it's not enabled by default. Never had the slightest problem with machine functions when enabling Memory Integrity, but that isn't set in stone. Nothing Windows-related is, please!!

 

https://www.howtogeek.com/357757/what-are-core-isolation-and-memory-integrity-in-windows-10/

 

with the latest update I am getting
sc query dmwappushservice (from NT Authority system)
each time I run an exe, also disabling WD is a tad difficult now, I am running wise vector

 

I have a 6th-gen. Intel i3-6100U, Windows 10 1909, and Memory Integrity has been working so far for 6 weeks with no problems. Also Secure Boot, TPM, and Spectre/Meltdown mitigations working fine, with no apparent performance hit from the latter.

 

Microsoft now provides Defender updates for Windows install images
October 2, 2020
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...-defender-updates-for-windows-install-images/

 

Wow, sounds pretty bad, thanks for the heads up. But I guess it really depends on the PC, when I switch to Win 10 I will let you know how it fares.

 

Well this is not new, it's on every computer I use and you see my laptop specs my signature, it's not my computer as I think with these kind of specs I ought to be loading my Software folder which contains custom icons without having them load one by one in slow motion, that's just one basic example of how slow it is:



Installing apps is slower, same with launching them. The biggest problem with Windows defender other than its slow scanning is that it keeps on scanning the files again and again upon every access unlike other AVs which have a whitelisting feature and wouldn't rescan again if the file hashes hasn't changed. People tell me each AV performs differently on different machines. I think that's nonsense as it's slow on every machine I've used it and how can it be slow on my machine which has one of the fastest SSDs and a super fast i9-10900K + 32GB of 3200 MHz RAM and the OS is tweaked to not have any background apps or telemetry.

 

Yes, I see what you mean, I can understand that you're not exactly a big fan of Win Def, but others say they don't have these problems. On the other hand, perhaps they have got different standards, personally I also can't stand even minor problems related to speed.

 

Pretty sure the anti-exploit stuff in the security center is seperate from WD's realtime scanning. the smartscreen filter is, so I would assume the anti-exploit stuff is too.

 

Windows Defender is separate from Device Security (Memory Integrity), Smartscreen and Exploit Protection (App & browser control). They all work independently of each other. SS and MI may be disabled completely.

 

I have never been able to turn Memory integrity on with my machine, it says 'try resolving any incompatibilities with your drivers', it doesn't say which though...

 

I get the same on my laptop. isn't there a "Learn more" link? I'm on my desktop right now.

It shows what drivers are the issue on my machine but there aren't any new drivers available.

 

Here's one for the WD fans. Googling didn't really find any results that answered my question. I've found that running WD on a new machine with an i9, 32 GB of RAM, and SSD RAID really isn't bad. It also has full hardware support for all of the latest Device Security features. That said, on an old CPU that does not support these features is WD as effective here or is this a situation where it lacks against 3rd party products?

 

It should not make any difference for a home user.

 

Could you explain why? I've searched online why is this happening, and there was no conclusive answer except that with memory integrity on, some drivers may not load on the system. I'm not really concerned as I believe I can deal with any type of malware contingency, but for the sake of the argument and out of curiosity I'd like to know what drivers might be affected.

 

The protection offered by default with Microsoft Defender doesnt change because of CPU architecture and while Memory Integrity from Core Isolation sounds powerful it isnt something that a home user should care about, keep the system/applications up-to-date, use a Standard User Account and a modern browser with an ad block enabled and it is fine.

My hardware support Memory Integrity, but I dont enable it because it is still prone to driver conflict while I simple dont need this kind of protection (who does really? enterprise users that need to use really old software?)

3rd party products dont have this kind of production, so I found the initial question from Jack a little weird, the lack of Core Isolation features doesnt degrade the protection offered by default with Microsoft Defender and it is really on par and some cases better than 3rd party solutions.

Geek security users tend to waste time with solutions that in the overall picture are inconsequential ...

Edit: It seems that Memory Integrity is enabled by default now in newer Windows installations, so the "default" that I wrote above may not be accurate anymore.

 

My original question was based on the possibility that if those features were not supported on your hardware, were there any other unseen features that may also be lacking because of it. I'm hearing you say that is not the case, and that would be a good thing. Just looking for clarification.

As for the d3efault we actually already had that discussion a few days ago. My new laptop did not come with memory integrity enabled and others were saying the same. So the current default still seems to be off.

 

Today, Nobody is Going to Attack You.

An interesting post by @Minimalist .

 

A very interesting post indeed, I fully agree with the author.