I had recently disabled windows defender on windows 10 and when I did I know want to enable it again but when I open action center and press Turn On Now it does nothing. I have pressed it multiple times and with no result. Fix: press Windows Key + R type regedit locate the following path * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS DEFENDER* Right Click this file and select permissions press Advanced where it says owner press change change the owner to your username Now press apply then ok select Full Control from the permissions menu (click the Widnows Defender folder ) Find the value DisableAntiSpyware and DisableAntiVirus and set these values to 0 (explaination: double click each and where the 1 is put 0 and press ok) Open services.msc find Windows Defender there should be 2 services: Windows Defender Service and Windows Defnder Netwrok right click each and press start after you have started both restart your computer Run Windows Defend er I Hope this Helps! Feel Free to Reply

Fix: press Windows Key + R type regedit locate the following path * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS DEFENDER* Right Click this file and select permissions press Advanced where it says owner press change change the owner to your username Now press apply then ok select Full Control from the permissions menu (click the Widnows Defender folder ) Find the value DisableAntiSpyware and DisableAntiVirus and set these values to 0 (explaination: double click each and where the 1 is put 0 and press ok) Open services.msc find Windows Defender there should be 2 services: Windows Defender Service and Windows Defnder Netwrok right click each and press start after you have started both restart your computer Run Windows Defend er I Hope this Helps! Feel Free to Reply

I followed the steps in this post, and was able to get Windows Defender fully functional. It's a bit more drama than you would expect, but once you get past it you're good to go on Windows 10.

Defender wont work with the win 10 install but you don't need the mac , get avast or another good free antivirus till then. yes same problem here....wonder how many updates will be here this next week?

Wow... That worked with a few side steps. But what a lot of drama. Thank you for posting this fix. Steps 11-14 did not work for me. The services failed to start. But I restarted my computer at that point and launched the Windows Defender application. On the Home screen I selected the Start option and everything now appears to be operational.

That link doesn't tell you how to do a clean boot in Windows 10.

Windows 10: Windows Defender will not turn on SOLVED

Anonymous

I had recently disabled windows defender on windows 10 and when I did I know want to enable it again but when I open action center and press Turn On Now it does nothing. I have pressed it multiple times and with no result.

Fix:

press Windows Key + R
type regedit
locate the following path *HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS DEFENDER*
Right Click this file and select permissions
press Advanced
where it says owner press change
change the owner to your username
Now press applythen ok
select Full Controlfrom the permissions menu

(click the Widnows Defender folder)

Find the value DisableAntiSpyware and DisableAntiVirus and set these values to 0

(explaination: double click each and where the 1 is put 0 and press ok)

Open services.msc
find Windows Defender
there should be 2 services: Windows Defender Serviceand Windows Defnder Netwrok
right click each and press start
after you have started both restart your computer
Run Windows Defend er

I Hope this Helps!

Feel Free to Reply

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author