Windows Defender - Software Explorer - Useless on Vista as far as I can tell.

[Wayne Hartell]

This piece of software was great under Windows XP and now I am on vacation
for a few days I have decided to go for the "wow" and upgrade to Vista. So
far the only "wow" I have is in "Wow, I can't believe I've wasted 2 full
days setting this up and I'm still not done." (Not to mention the "wow"
about insanely slow file copying, but I'll leave that for another day).

Anyway, to the point of this posting... Every time I start Vista I get a pop
up telling me about the fact it has blocked a startup program. That's all
well and fine since normally I would expect to be able to go into Windows
Defender and either remove or disable the start up entry for the offending
program. The problem is that the 3 buttons at the bottom right (Remove,
Disable, Enable) are permanently disabled! It doesn't matter what I click on
in the user interface I just cannot get any of those buttons to become
clickable. (I've even tried running Windows Defender as an administrator).

If I visit Microsoft's support article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930367

Method #2 is to click the "Disable" button to disable the offending item.
Well, there's no mention there of what to do if the button is permanently
disabled. Anyone have any ideas other than going back to XP?

Wayne.

 

[Lee]

This piece of software was great under Windows XP and now I am on vacation
for a few days I have decided to go for the "wow" and upgrade to Vista. So
far the only "wow" I have is in "Wow, I can't believe I've wasted 2 full
days setting this up and I'm still not done." (Not to mention the "wow"
about insanely slow file copying, but I'll leave that for another day).

Anyway, to the point of this posting... Every time I start Vista I get a
pop up telling me about the fact it has blocked a startup program. That's
all well and fine since normally I would expect to be able to go into
Windows Defender and either remove or disable the start up entry for the
offending program. The problem is that the 3 buttons at the bottom right
(Remove, Disable, Enable) are permanently disabled! It doesn't matter what
I click on in the user interface I just cannot get any of those buttons to
become clickable. (I've even tried running Windows Defender as an
administrator).

If I visit Microsoft's support article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930367

Method #2 is to click the "Disable" button to disable the offending item.
Well, there's no mention there of what to do if the button is permanently
disabled. Anyone have any ideas other than going back to XP?

I don't know if this is what you want, but when I get that I click the
bubble-alert, right-click on the associated tray icon, select Run blocked
startup program, which pops out to "System Configuration Utility", which
produces that familar dialogue from XP with the "Don't show me this again.."
checkbox.

 

[OKuma]

I think I understand what you are saying.

In Windows Defender on Vista, if you go to Tools, then Software Explorer and
select an application;
All the buttons are disabled.

Most but not all of my applications have the same problem.

I think the reason for all three buttons being disables, is because the
application is published for all users.

There should be a button in the lower left side that says "Show for all
users"

Click that and you should have all the buttons enabled.

OKuma

 

[MattersNot]

I think I understand what you are saying.

In Windows Defender on Vista, if you go to Tools, then Software Explorer
and select an application;
All the buttons are disabled.

Most but not all of my applications have the same problem.

I think the reason for all three buttons being disables, is because the
application is published for all users.

There should be a button in the lower left side that says "Show for all
users"

Click that and you should have all the buttons enabled.

Thanks, OKuma,

Good tip. Had the same problem. Sometimes one can't see the
forest for the trees.