Windows Defender is Microsoft’s own anti-malware software that comes bundled in Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. It does protect your PC from all kinds of threats, however you may want to disable it completely before installing another commercial or free antivirus that offers many more features like Avast Antivirus or Kaspersky Antivirus.
We have already published how you can disable Windows Defender in Windows 10 using the Group Policy Editor before, but if you want a quicker and easier method to disable Windows Defender then you can use the registry entry file (.reg file) to add the proper entries in your Windows registry and make all the changes.
You can download the enable-disable-windows10-defender.zip file and save it somewhere in your PC. After extracting the contents of this ZIP archive you will find two .reg files. You can double click on disable-defender.reg and then choose Yes when Windows asks you if you want to merge the entries in the registry.
You may have to restart Windows before the changes take effect. Now you can check Windows Settings → Update and Security → Windows Defender. You will find that Windows Defender has been turned off and the settings are being managed by the system administrator (this means that you cannot change the settings yourself through Settings window).
If at any later time, you wish to enable Windows Defender, then you can double-click on the enable-defender.reg file and merge the entries in the Windows registry. Like before, you may have to restart your PC and then Windows Defender will be enabled once again.
If you choose to disable Windows Defender, you must install a good antivirus software in your PC so that you stay protected from different threats both online and offline. There are many antivirus solutions available for Windows users like Avast Free Antivirus or Kaspersky Free Antivirus.