In other words, you need to install some sort of protection software, such as ESET NOD32, Kaspersky Antivirus, Avast, Bitdefender or some other application that will save you from trouble.

However, what if you have installed some of these antiviruses, such as Avast, for example, and the antivirus keeps blocking some of your favorite sites, applications, or files.

In that case, you have a couple of options. First, to whitelist any of these items in the antivirus software and second, to temporarily or permanently turn off the entire antivirus, or just some of its parts, which will be explained in the steps that follow.

How to Disable Avast

If you are looking to turn-off Avast entirely, these are the actions that you need to do:

1. First, go to “Taskbar” and select “Show hidden icons”.



2. In the newly opened window, go to Avast icon and right-click on it.



3. When a new menu appears, enter “Avast shields control”

   

   and in the drop-down menu select the desired disabling option.



4. After that, the “Confirmation” window will appear and you need to confirm it, with the “OK” button.



5. Now, you have successfully disabled your Avast antivirus.

Ok, but what if you want to just disable some of the functions, not the entire program?

1. As you may guess, the first thing you need to do to manage that is to open Avast, either through the “Taskbar”

   

   or through the “Windows menu”.



2. When you have opened it, go to “Protection”

   

   and select “Core Shields”.



3. In the newly opened window, go to the “Shield” that you want to turn off and click on it.



4. Select how long you want to turn it off,

   

   confirm that in a “Confirmation” window

   

   and your work is done.

However, what if you want to switch to some other antivirus solution? What if you have subscribed to Avast, but want to try ESET NOD32, Kaspersky or some other antivirus. In that case, you need to cancel your Avast subscription, in order not to pay for something that you don’t use. Here’s how to do that:

How to Cancel Avast Subscription

If you have decided to cancel your Avast subscription, you should know that there are a couple of ways to do it and here are just some of them:

1. First and one of the most common ways is through your “Avast account”, which can be managed over this link, where you will be required to enter your Avast account credentials.



2. After that, you will get to “My Subscriptions” section, where you need to select “Unsubscribe”, bellow the name of the application that you no longer want to use.



3. Choose “Unsubscribe from future renewals and let my subscription expire on…”, press the “Confirm” button and wait until the new window appears.



4. When it does, click on “Got it” and that is pretty much it.

   

   You have successfully canceled your Avast subscription.

If you have purchased your subscription via Digital River, you have the option to do the cancellation process over the “Avast customer portal”, which you can enter through the following link.

1. In a newly opened window, you will be asked to enter your email (the one you used for the purchase) and the Order ID you received through the confirmation email from Digital River and click on “Log in” button.



2. After that, on “Your subscriptions” page, click on “Unsubscribe” button, next to the product for which you want to cancel the subscription

   

   and, similar as with the first process, select “Unsubscribe from future renewals and let my subscription expire on…”, press “Confirm”,

   

   click on “Got it” and you have finished the job.

One more option, if the first two ways aren’t really your thing, or don’t work for some reason, is to contact Avast over this link.

1. Fill in the required information, submit the request and wait for the Avast conformation,

   

   or directly contact Avast support over their phone number +1-855-738-1646 and before you know it, you will free yourself from unneeded expenses.

There’s also the consistently-rising popularity of USB sticks, many so portable and common as to be used as keychains and increasingly boasting storage in the terabytes.

To many, this also paints a vivid picture of opportunities for malware, viruses, and hacking attempts growing in the same ratio.

Microsoft has attempted to combat this with Windows Defender, a built-in security app included in their OS from Windows 7 and up, making sure that even those oblivious to these threats can be protected just as well.

The irony? Windows Defender, with all its real-time security protection, either falls short of most users’ needs or is inefficient and obstructive while being hyper-vigilant.

For this, people look for a way to turn off Windows Defender or, for people who have much better solutions in place, uninstall Windows Defender altogether.

If you’re here, this means you’re already one of us. Let’s get to it.

How to disable Windows Defender

Windows Defender works slightly differently on different versions of Windows.

For users of Windows 7 and 8, Windows Defender must be completely and manually disabled if you’re to use any other anti-virus or firewall.

For Windows 10, the need to turn off Windows Defender in Windows 10 is mostly optional, as it disables real-time protection as soon as another third-party security app is installed.

Step 0: On either version of Windows, you can open Windows Defender from either the Start button or Search Box in the toolbar by searching the keyword “defender”.

(If the option for Settings comes up, head to that directly, otherwise you can find Settings on either the top-right corner or bottom-left in Windows 10 or the Tools setting on the top bar in Windows 7.)

First, we’ll talk about how to turn off Windows Defender in Windows 10.

Once here, what you’re looking for is a toggle switch with text that reads “Real-time protection”, enabling you to turn it off. If you can’t find it straight away, head over to a tab named Virus & threat protection settings; these settings are different in different versions of Windows.

As we’re using a Professional version of Windows 10 for Education, we found the Real-time protection setting in Virus and protection settings.

Switching this to Off allows you to effectively disable Windows Defender.

For Windows 7, the process to do the same is slightly different.

Step 1: Once you’ve come to the Tools and Settings page (as explained above in what we called the zeroth step), look for Options.

Step 2: In the left-hand pane, one of the last options should be Administrator.

Step 3: In the Administration tab, uncheck “Use this program”, and click Save. Windows Defender will confirm that you’ve turned it off.

However, whether it’s Windows 7 or 10, some people face troubles with Windows Defender restarting itself on each system reboot.

The workaround for this is a very simple hack, and you can find it on the same Settings page we already led you to.

(The process from here on out is similar on all versions of Windows if you can get a theoretical grasp on what we’re doing, which is very simple.)

Let’s say your Windows is installed on the C:\ drive, as it often is.

Clicking on Add or remove exclusions, you’ll see something like this:

From Add an exclusion, select Folder, select your C: drive and click OK.

The entire C:\ drive (meaning your entire operating system) is now ‘excluded’ from real-time protection, meaning you can install and uninstall software and apps and keygens and hacks (if you know what you’re doing!) without interruption from Windows Defender.

On different versions of Windows, there might be direct options for Files and folders, file types, and processes. Here, you can select C:\ from Exclude a folder under Files and folders. Of course, you can just add each of all your drives as an exclusion, too.

How to remove Windows Defender

While we recommend keeping Windows Defender installed and enabled if you don’t have another (better and more robust) anti-virus app, Microsoft realizes that people will try nonetheless.

As such, any method to remove Windows Defender is only temporary, and it can come back on the next Windows Update.

However, one method that shows results is to remove Windows Defender through the Windows Registry.

Step 1: Open the Windows Registry Editor through typing ‘regedit’ in the Search box or Run tool.

Step 2: On the left-hand side, under Computer, you should see several keys. Click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then SOFTWARE, then Policies, then Microsoft, and finally Windows Defender.

Step 3: In the empty space on the right, right-click and hover on New, and click on D-WORD (32-bit) value.

Step 4: Right-click the new item and Rename it to DisableAntiSpyware.

Step 5: Double-click the DisableAntiSpyware item and change its Value Data to 1.

Step 6: Restart your computer.

Once done, Windows Defender will stay disabled until the next Windows Update – which you might also be able to disable or uninstall but we’ll leave all that for another article. For now, disabling or removing Windows Defender should do the trick.