Windows 11 comes with Windows Defender which is both an antivirus and a firewall product. This in-built product cannot be disabled or removed from the system using any official documentation. This is a problem for the PC users who want to turn their Windows 11 computers into lean and mean gaming rigs. This is because advanced PC gamers tend to remove all the extra programs from Windows to have more system resources free for games.
Fortunately for the advanced Windows users, someone has created a useful program that can disable Windows Defender and associated settings. This tool works on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows 11.
Here is how you can remove Windows Defender from Windows 10 or Windows 11:
- Download Defender Remover from https://github.com/jbara2002/windows-defender-remover/releases. You have to download the EXE file. For example, in my case, I downloaded Defender.Remover.12.exe which works on Windows 11 as well as Windows 10. Depending on the version of the program, the file name could be a little different when you download it from its website.
- Double-click on the downloaded EXE an give the permission to run it as an administrator. You might have to provide the administrator credentials for it to be run.
- You will see a console window in which there are many options to choose. For example, if you want to disable Windows Defender antivirus only, then you can type N and then the Enter key. If you want to create a system restore point, then you can press R and then Enter. There are many more options. Typically, you will first create a system restore point (R) and then remove Windows Defender (Y) from your system.
- After it processes the command sets, you are required to reboot your system.
Defender Remover removes or disables Windows Defender that comes built-in with Windows. We can enable Windows Defender later if needed using the same tool.
The program additionally removes services and elements such as Windows Security App, Windows Virtualization-Based Security (VBS), Windows Smart-Screen, Windows Security Services, Windows Web-Threat Service and Windows File Virtualization (UAC) and Microsoft Defender App Guard.
In the latest version of Defender Remover, the developer has added a new feature of importing install.wim and making changing inside it so that Windows Defender is disabled from the beginning.