It’s weird when Windows Defender is still in BETA, many Windows XP users eagerly wanting to install and see how great it is. Now Windows Vista has Windows Defender installed by default, many people are looking for ways to disable, uninstall or remove it from system as they prefer to use other anti spyware programs. Is Windows Defender a failure? I don’t know because I don’t use it as well since I already have Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0 on my computer.

Uninstall Windows Defender VistaIn my opinion, if you’ve downloaded and installed Windows Defender in Windows XP, you can simply uninstall it from Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel. But as for Windows Vista, it is built-in and I don’t recommend you to uninstall and remove it from your hard drive. The safest way is stopping Windows Defender from auto running whenever Windows Vista is booted up.

Here is how to safely disable Windows Defender in Windows Vista.

There are 2 ways to stop Windows Defender from auto starting when Windows is booted up.

The hard way.
1. Go to Start > Run and type services.msc
2. Look for Windows Defender name and double click to bring up the properties window.
3. Click “Stop” button to stop Windows Defender services and set the Startup type “Disabled”
Stop Windows Defender Services
4. Go to Start > Run and type msconfig
5. Go to Startup tab and uncheck Windows Defender displayed at Startup Item.
disable Windows defender from MSCONFIG

Important: If you only stop and disable Windows Defender from Services and did not disable Windows Defender at MSCONFIG, you’ll get the error message “Application failed to initialized: 0x800106ba. A problem caused this program’s service to stop. To start the service, restart your computer or search Help and Support for how to start a service manually.”
Application failed to initialized: 0x800106ba. A problem caused this program's service to stop. To start the service, restart your computer or search Help and Support for how to start a service manually

The easy way.
1. Run Windows Defender.
2. Click Tools and go to Options
3. Scroll right to the bottom and you’ll see an option “Use Windows Defender”.
4. Uncheck “Use Windows Defender” and it’ll be disabled.
Uncheck Use Windows Defender

Disabling Windows Defender in Windows will leave your computer unprotected from spywares. A good alternative that you can use to replace Windows Defender is AVG Anti-Spyware Free Edition 7.5 which is a popular free antispyware solution available at no cost to home users and provides a high level of detection capability.

[tags]defender, windows, uninstall, spyware, security[/tags]