Defender running but not in taskbar, not popping up

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bert Hyman
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Bert Hyman

XP Pro SP3
Defender 1.1.1593.0

On reboot, the Defender icon is not in the taskbar, but the app is
apparently running, with MSACui and MsMpEng active.

More important, I did not get an expected popup warning me when an app I
regularly run made a change to the ....\RunOnce registry key.

When I "ran" Defender from the Start menu, the registry change warning was
in the list of problems to be resolved.

Oddly, when I did a "Switch user" to my wife's login, the Defender icon was
in her taskbar, but when I logged her off and switched back to me, the icon
was still missing.

The startup registry key for Defender is

"C:\Program Files\Windows Defender\MSASCui.exe" -hide

which I gather is what it's supposed to be.

This behavior is very consistent with Defender and I don't think it can be
explained away by any general "quirky" behavior of the taskbar.
 
In Bert Hyman
On reboot, the Defender icon is not in the taskbar, but the app is
apparently running, with MSACui and MsMpEng active.

BTW, when it's in this state, re-running the WindowsDefender.msi
installation and selecting "Update" causes the icon to pop up when the
update is done.

Something else I tried earlier that didn't help was to go into
Tools->Options->Real-time protection options and change "Choose when the
.... icon appears ..." back and forth between "Always" and "Only if ...",
saving each time. Nothing happened.
 
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