Chaldera

No, I think that's fixed everything. Thank you so much Maurice 😄 you're a lifesaver, and far too patient lol. And I've learnt a valuable lesson on not downloading anything dodgy. Have a great day and stay safe!

Result for WMIC SERVICE WHERE Name="windefend" set startmode="auto" was: Updating property(s) of '\\DESKTOP-PDP3S9S\ROOT\CIMV:Win32_Service.Name="WinDefend"' Property(s) update successful. Result for net start windefend was: The requested service has already been started. More help is available by typing NET HELPMSG 2182.

Okay, it let me merge the file when I went into Safe Mode. I'm going to try the other steps from your previous post now, and I'll update with the results.

Same message again, Maurice. It really doesn't want me to merge this file.

Hi Maurice, So I'm experiencing an issue with the first step; I've saved the windefend.reg file to my desktop, but when I right-click and press Merge, it asks me if I want to let Registry Editor continue (which I assume is just the PC ensuring I want to do that). I click Yes, and then it comes up with a warning about adding information. I click Yes to continue, and it then says it can't be added due to an error in accessing the registry. I'm sorry about all the trouble I'm causing with this, I clearly should have paid a lot more attention in IT class.

And done. The tool ran faster than I expected, and it asked me to restart. Unfortunately, Windows Defender still isn't fixed, which makes me think that it really has been deleted or uninstalled by the virus I had. On the plus side, the laptop seems to load ever so slightly faster. Thank you for the assistance you've provided already, and if you can think of anything else I would be happy to try 🙂 Fixlog.txt

I'm not sure how I confused POWERSHELL and Command prompt, sorry about that. But yeah, I got a similar response to both commands; No Instance(s) Available.

It's run, and it says ZoneAlarm is still there but disabled (even though it should have been completely removed). I've checked my Program Files and I can't find either ZoneAlarm or Checkpoint. SecurityCheck.txt

Both responses were ERROR.

I've run all three and restarted Windows (restarted after each one just in case).

So from what you saw from the logs, am I safe to do a Repair Upgrade to get Windows Defender back?

Sorry about the delay Maurice, I've been spending a fair bit of time trying to remove Zone-Alarm; I'd installed it several months back and thought it had been removed when I uninstalled it via Add&Remove Programs about 2 months ago, but I've just had to go into Safe Mode to manually remove it. I've uninstalled what remained of McAfee (which I'd uninstalled shortly after I got this laptop, but McAfee is harder to remove than I thought) and Avast as well. Incidentally, I only installed Avast this morning after I found out that Windows Defender was (and unfortunately still is) missing.

Okay, the scan completed and it says it removed one bit of malware called "VirTool:Win32/DefenderTamperingRestore", which I assume from the name was part of the issue with Defender being deleted. msert.log

Hi Maurice, Thank you for the warm welcome and the assistance with this. My name's David 🙂. I'm just running the Microsoft Safety Scanner now; as soon as it finishes and the log is generated, I'll post another reply with the log and the result of the scan.

So as a preface, I'm not great with computers, but I will try to provide as much info as I can. I found about this forum thanks to the top answer of this thread on the Microsoft Community forums. As the title says, my Windows Defender has gone missing and I suspect it's because of something I've downloaded previously (I did pirate some games which I have since uninstalled because I'm now terrified they've messed up my laptop). I want to get it back, but as per the advice from that other forum, I want to make sure that I've fully flushed my system of any virus/trojans etc before I do that. My logs from MalwareBytes and FRST as per the "I'm infected" thread on this forum are on this post, please let me know if there's anything else you need me to run so that we can get this fixed. malwarebytes.txt Addition.txt FRST.txt