Windows defender slowing down computer Reddit

The default anti virus setup in Windows 10 is very good, depending on how you use it.

I personally can highly recommend their ransomware protection mode, but that can become a bit annoying to use at first. What this basically does is protect a group of folders from any kind of access by any kind of program.

So... if you start using this you'll be busy adding your commonly used software to the whitelist. But once you have that all setup... good luck to viruses; because even if they manage to infect some of your software Windows will then immediately recognize the differences and block that software again.

This makes it pretty much impossible for any ransomware to attack your personal files, simply because Windows will block any software from accessing those files.

Of course this assumes that you don't constantly install & remove software all day, because in that case it's a bit counter productive.

So, I've been running Windows 10 on this exact hardware setup for a few years now. No issues whatsover. Perfect experience. It gets used for all sorts of things by my whole family. Minecraft, youtube, Microsoft Office, browsing, and I develop on it. Python mostly. Got a MySQL instance running where I do some volunteer data science stuff for a local non-profit. Peaches and cream, man. No issues at all.

Then, day before yesterday, the thing just screeched to a fucking halt. Every click takes 30 seconds to respond. Every app is glacially slow. Some things don't work at all. Can't log on to MySQL through Workbench (though the server still works, and I can hit it from python code just fine). Windows restore won't even load for me to try to restore to an old point. Ran a full defender scan, which took 30 hours. WTF. Nothing found. Got AVG, Kaspersky and MalwareBytes. They also found nothing in full scans.

However, I noticed that when they were up, and Defender was down, the PC worked just fine. I tested it a few ways. AVG on, Defender off. Kaspersky on, Defender off. MWB on, Defender off. No virus/malware protection on at all. Just Defender on.

Every configuration turned my box back in the hoss that it is. Except Defender. Which basically rendered it useless.

WTF? Any ideas? The only thing I've done new on the thing in the last couple weeks was to use ADB on the PC to root and install a custom rom on an ancient Kindle Fire. Which worked fine. The slowdown didn't start until a few days after that little exercise, anyway.

My friends told me it's better to use windows defender since it's good anti-virus now and it has less of an impact on my pc so I deleted my bid defender back then.

I downloaded a game from a website (it's not pirated just doesn't have a specific location I guess) a lot of sources said it's safe and it looked like it wi down defender hasn't found any threats after the download so I'm a bit relieved but still worried.

If i do get a virus and I delete it will my pc go back to normal or will any hardware be damaged and need to be replaced since it has been slowed down?

Should I install and buy a anti-virus just to be safe? Even though it could slow down my pc?

I was planing to download a couple of other similar games will an anti virus stop me from downloading any content online and delete any files that are existing already?

Honestly, I think this is the wrong question. The one I would ask is; "Why has the industry moved away from recommending aftermarket antivirus?"

And the reason for that is most commercial antivirus don't catch the vast majority of viruses.

I'm still of the thought that a few aftermarket Antivirus and Firewall suites are good. ESET, Sophos, and a few others. I used to heavily recommend Trend Micro, but not any longer because of past issues.

Despite a few good products, there's still a process of protecting your PC and removing viruses. Not everyone knows what to look for. IIRC; then you could use Process Explorer, and Proc Mon to locate badly behaving software and remove it manually.

The enterprise world still uses various tools, such as event monitoring, and endpoint security to catch viruses.

^ This. When you buy an additional AV - You are just paying them for those additional features. The detection rates nowadays are almost all the same, same engines, etc. (What better people to protect malicious things from your computer than the maker themselves of the OS?). Those "Additional features" can slow down a not-so-powerful computer as well. I don't think people realize at times; technology, computers, programming, etc... It's "meant" to work autonomously, in a good environment. Additional "cleaners" and "install 2 firewalls to protect from hacker man!" are all voodoo and snake oil, fear-mongering at worst, to get you to pay, or use software with built-in ads and data-mining (Everything is worth something), even your day-to-day user logs for statistics/logistics so that the "smart guys working for the big money bags" can figure out how to effectively sell better/what they are doing "wrong".

uBlock Origin, network-level adguard/pi-hole protection, and use of a standard account with system-level things blocked via an admin account = the best. And of course, the one mentioned the most, is common sense (Spot those phishing scams, etc). All free. If something still happens and bypasses this? It needs to be written about.

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