do I need to uninstall defender to use webroot?

  • 24 February 2015
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Just bought a new win8 machine that came with win defender--do I need to uninstall it to run webroot a/v?

1 reply

Userlevel 7
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Hello bluesman69,
 
Welcome to the Webroot Community Forum,
 
I would approach this with this perspective in that as WSA does everything that Window Defender does only much, much better, why put up with additional drag.
 
As soon as you install any third-party antivirus on a Windows 8/Windows 8.1 computer, due to the built-in feature of many of the third-party antivirus applications, the Windows Defender is automatically turned off. When this happens, Windows 8/Windows 8.1 informs you about this with an information in the message box that pops up when you type Windows Defender in the Search field from the Charms bar.
 
If you feel comfortable doing registry changes? But I don't see the need to as WSA is much better than Windows Defender can ever be!
 
Windows Defender Tweak if users want to run with WSA on Windows 8 or Windows 8.1
 
 
Windows 8.1 detects other AVs in the Action Center and blocks Defender from becoming active.

You can create a value of type DWORD named HideActionCenter (under HKLMSoftwareWRData on 32bit or for 64bit HKLMSoftwareWow6432NodeWRData) set to '1' and reboot and it will prevent Webroot from adding into the Action Center to allow Defender to stay active.
 
And the answer to whether Webroot can run along side Windows Defender is yes if you want it to.
 
 
Hope this helps and if not please get back to us.
 
 
Kind Regards,
 
 

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