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Whenever I boot Windows 7, I get the message that says Windows Defender has been turned off (because of Security Essentials). I want Windows Defender off, and I want the message to go away. How do I kill this boot message? I disabled the service, but no effect.

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3 Answers

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You need to turn off Defender from within Defender. No other way will actually completely remove the messages you indicate. See here

I'll add though, that MSE and Defender work together nicely. No need to do what you're trying to do.

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Since Windows Defender doesn't run, this doesn't help. Stopping the service did not get rid of the boot message. – xpda Feb 14 '11 at 5:20
@xpda - you need to enable the service and disable Defender as indicated in my answer. – edusysadmin Feb 14 '11 at 19:16
When I tried that, Windows Defender would not run because of MSE, so I could not disable it from within Defender. Removing the registry setting prevents Windows Defender from trying to start in the first place. – xpda Feb 16 '11 at 18:59
@xpda - I'd uninstall MSE, undo the reg edits and service changes on Defender and reinstall MSE. As indicated below MSE should disable Defender and MSE should be listed as your tool of choice under the Action Center heading 'Spyware and unwanted software protection'. – edusysadmin Feb 17 '11 at 0:19
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Go to Control Panel (icon view) > Action Center, look under "Security" see if MSE is detected in two categories

Anti Virus and Spyware.

If it is not, that is the problem, I would uninstall MSE and try the MSE installer in administrator mode to install it again.

enter image description here

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Security Essentials turns off Windows Defender, so I have been getting that message. Windows Defender won't run.

I disabled all the messages in Action Center, but it didn't help. I checked System Configuration, Startup, and it's not listed there. But there was a Windows Defender Service. I disabled that. No Change.

Finally, I found Windows Defender listed in System Information, System Summary, Software Environment, Startup Programs, with a -hide flag:

Windows Defender    %programfiles%\windows defender\msascui.exe -hide    Public    HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

I killed that key in the registry and that solved the program. The hide flag must be why it didn't show up in System Configuration and msconfig startup.

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