Disappearing Defender

[Guest]

I had the same problem as snowman, not on a network, just my home PC. Now my
shortcut to Defender says it can't be found and it has disappeared from the
prog. listings nor is it on the add/remove prog. list... does this tie in
with it being disabled?

 

[Dave M]

You need to tell us your operating system... is it Vista... in which case
Windows Defender will normally not appear in Control Panel > Add/Remove
since it's part of the Operating System and can't generally be removed.
Also, do you have Windows Live OneCare installed, which will always disable
Defender?

 

[Guest]

XP service pack 2, yes I have WLOC and have had for almost a year, this
disapperance did seem to coincide with the upgrade to WLOC that was installed
6/13/07 though.
Concerned; ScareCrw56

 

[Dave M]

Yeap, ever since WLOC went to version 1.5, which was around the beginning
of 2007, it's by default disabled the standalone Windows Defender. Here's
the relevant text from Ms:

"If Windows Defender is installed on a machine and then OneCare v1.5 is
installed afterward, by default the installation will disable Windows
Defender. Windows Defender will then display a dialog indicating that it
has been disabled, and asking if the user wants to turn it on again. When
you are installing OneCare v1.5 you should close this dialog without
re-enabling Defender. OneCare intentionally disables Defender because it
can cause system instability to have both running at the same time, and
since OneCare is a superset of Defender, there is no reason you would need
both of them running."
http://windowsonecare.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!C29701F38A601141!3842.entry

While not necessary, I think it's a good idea to leave Defender in place on
XP, since if at anytime you decide to remove WLOC, the standalone Defender
code will re-activate, and you'd have Anti-Spyware protection available.
You don't have that choice with Vista as it's part of the OS.

 

[Dave M]

The plot thickens... seems like your scenario is also being reported on the
OneCare newsgroups now where, in addition to disabling Defender, it's being
reported that "all traces of Defender have disappeared" following the
latest OneCare update. Take a look here, you may want to add your
experience to this thread:

http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsOneCare/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1736075&SiteID=2

 

[Bill Sanderson MVP]

I'm really amazed that the OneCare folks haven't learned anything
noticeable. The technical changes they are making are undoubtedly
reasonable and sensible, but the failure to mention them to the user is
wrong. Perhaps there's a readme or something explaining the update, but in
my rather ancient experience with OneCare, there was nothing like that.

I'm glad OneCare is getting better, but I wish their communication with
customers was also getting better.

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