Turning on Windows Firewall and Defender in Windows 8

Someone finally suggested I uninstall Norton, which I did.  Windows Defender immediately turned on.  Thank you, everyone, for your suggestions.

Removing the installed antivirus package is a necessary, but not always sufficient, condition for enabling Windows Defender – you often have to run the vendor’s clean-up tool before the Action Center will recognize that  the prior security program has been removed and thus give you the option to enable Windows Defender. Please review the introduction and first 2 sections of this FAQ:

http://experts.windows.com/w/experts\_wiki/163.aspx

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And sometimes completely removing the installed AV product doesn’t quite seem to do the trick either, so you might have to take some additional steps with this issue.

Unlike the old version, the Windows 8 version of Windows Defender is a comprehensive real-time antivirus product that’s strictly incompatible with any other real-time antivirus product, and it will properly refuse to run as long as you have any third-party AV product installed. So it’s very important to realize that you should only be trying to enable the new Windows Defender when you’re either absolutely sure that no other AV product was preinstalled, or after you’ve completely removed the AV product that came preinstalled. In many cases there won’t be a simple one-step fix because you’ll first need to completely remove the installed AV program and then you might also need to nudge the Action Center in order to make it realize that the preinstalled AV program has been removed. Here’s a (preliminary) list of the steps that I would recommend for getting Windows Defender up and running:

1.) Remove the current AV product in the Control Panel

Press the Windows key + X

And then press F

2.) Run the removal tool for the current AV product:

http://www.raymond.cc/blog/comprehensive-list-of-uninstallers-or-removal-tools-for-antivirus-software/

3.)  Look in the Action Center for the option to enable Windows Defender (and also attempt to resolve any other issues you see listed there). If there’s no option to turn on Windows Defender, then proceed with step 4:

Click on the “flag” icon in the taskbar notification tray and select “Open Action Center”, and then “Security”

4.) Stop and then restart the Security Center service – and then check the Action Center once again:

Press the Windows key + X

And then press P

Control Panel/System and Security/Administrative tools/Services/Security Center

5.) Copy, paste, and then run (press the Enter key) this command line at the admin command prompt – and then recheck the Action Center:

sc start WinDefend Enable

Press the Windows key + X

And then press A

6.) If you can’t get the option to turn on Windows Defender with the previous steps (and you’re sure that all traces of the preinstalled AV product have been removed), you can go ahead and give the Security Center a push instead of a nudge by rebuilding the WMI repository, which contains the Security Center’s AV registrations. Follow the steps in this post:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-performance/anti-virus-options/b92dae1e-4ac3-44fb-8728-88544dec3ad6 

The original source is here:

http://www.bitdefender.com/support/What-to-do-when-Windows-Security-Center-reports-Antivirus-Antispyware-and-or-Firewall-are-turned-off-1091.html

I already had this list put together (using other sources) when I ran across this local thread that seems to corroborate the idea that completely removing the installed AV product isn’t always enough to enable Windows Defender:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect\_defender-protect\_start/window-8-windows-defender-service-will-not-start/a5a5ebf8-d87e-4f2f-9850-db801d8be97a

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GreginMich

this is not working at all..

someone help me

whatever you specified is exactly same as in

http://technet.microsoft.com/library/cc755249.aspx .