What happened to the Windows Defender system tray icon?

[Guest]

How are you supposed to know if its working properly if there is no tray icon
and why have some of the features of antispyware disapeared e.g. tracks
eraser?

 

[Bill Sanderson]

The tray icon is gone temporarily, but will be able optionally to be
displayed at some future date.

 

[Guest]

that answers the question i had,,,,,thanks

The tray icon is gone temporarily, but will be able optionally to be
displayed at some future date.

 

[Bill Sanderson]

I haven't had confirmation of this, but I don't think this is a simple
question. Real Time Protection is provided by a system service. Scanning
and definition updates are provided by a command-line process. Neither of
these is associated with the icon. The icon is associated with msascui.exe
which is the user interface allowing control of both of the above mentioned
executables.

Once a version that allows the icon to stay visible is available, it will be
interesting to do a net stop windefend command, and see whether, or when,
any change to the icon results.

This issue is not nearly as simple as allowing an icon to display or not.

--

 

[Guest]

Windows Defender put an icon in my system tray when it detected some spyware

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Exactly--by design, the icon appears when user action is needed.

--

 

[Guest]

I may like to pop up in this discussion...

Compared to Microsoft Antispyware (the former Giant antispyware), Windows
Defender does not show it-self on the system tray, which I find annoying
because it prevents me to quickly check whether the computers I supervise
(about 30 !) are protected.

I see in the regsitry that Windows Defender is launched with the "-hide"
attribute (see hereunder a copy of the Run subkey)
Windows Defender\MSASCui.exe" -hide

What if I remove the "-hide" argument ?

Any help would be appreciated.

Paul

 

[Dave M]

Hello Paul;

If your running a current User Interface to Windows®Defender all you have
to do is go to Options and select Always in "Chose when Defender icon
appears in the notification area." Note that this involves using the
Scroll slider at the right of the Options screen. Your replying to a
comment that was made back in February... this behavior has since been
modified.

 

[Guest]

Dear Dave,

Thank you *very*much for for your kind and *very fast and effective* reply.
You are perfectlty correct. Actualla, after I posted my question, I
continued to browse through the forum and found indeed that version 1.1.1347
would offer the possibility you mentionned (I was using version 1.1.1051; I
do not understand why upgrade was not made automatically ...). I eventually
made the upgrade manually and indeed found then option you mentionned. But
again, you were good because I did not find it until I used the scroll slider
.... which you pointed out to me.

So everything is fine now, and I am glad I raised my question to this
community ... because of your kind end efficient answer.

I have no idea where you live, but if you travel across Belgium (which is
where I live), let me know and we'll share a good (Belgian, of course...)
beer.

Regards,

Paul.

 

[Dave M]

....Aw darn Paul, I just got back to California from Brussels, where I
sampled more than a few of those Leffe Blonds and Stella's. We
particularly enjoyed the ones they serve in your McDonald's hamburger
places... It makes the whole experience much more pleasurable. Thanks for
the offer.