How to Disable Windows Defender in Windows 11

In this article, I’ll be showing you how you can disable Windows Defender on your Windows 11.

Before we get started, just a disclaimer: This might be a little different compared to what you are used to before when you are disabling a Windows Defender or Windows Security on Windows 10 as Windows 11 has tighter security measures before you can actually disable it.

Now, let’s get started!

First, go ahead to the Start menu and type in the search bar “System Configuration” and open that app. We are going to be booting a safe mode boot option, so go the Boot tab. You will see the Boot options so make sure to check the Safe boot and set it as minimal. Hit the apply button and ok button.

After that, you just have to click “Exit without restart” just to confirm that the Windows Security is currently running on the computer. You may go back to the start menu and look for the Windows Security app.

As you will see, the Virus & threat protection will show that it is turned on. Hence, you will need to restart your computer so we can disable that Windows Security feature on our Windows 11.

After restarting your computer, you will now be put in the Safe mode on your Windows 11. So you can now go ahead and change some settings on the registry.

Disable Windows Defender Using Registry

Go to the Start menu, right-click on it and select the run option. Type there “regedit“, hit the ok button, and you’ll be shown the Registry Editor window. You’ll now go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE folder and proceed to the SYSTEM folder. Then, look for the CurrentControlSet folder and under that is the Services folder, where we will be disabling particular services.

Under the Services folder, we are going to scroll down until we find the “Sense“. Click on it and we are going to be changing the Start key, which you’ll find on the right side. Open the Start key and change the value to “4” under the hexadecimal base and hit the ok button. These particular steps will be repeated as we go on.

Back to the left side column, we are going to be looking for the “WdBoot” folder. Same as before, we are going to click the Start key, and change the value to “4” with hexadecimal as base, then click ok.

Next, on the left side column, find the “WdFilter“. Repeat the process of changing the value on the Start key as we did before.

After that, you will look for “WdNisDrv” and repeat the same process.

You’ll be following the same steps with the “WdNisSvc” folder.

Lastly, repeat again the process for the “WinDefend” folder.

Finally, we now have successfully disabled the Windows Defender on the Windows 11.

In case you want to re-enable your Windows Defender, here are the default registry key values you will need to re-input:

• Sense – 3
• WdBoot -0
• WdFilter – 0
• WdNisDrv – 3
• WdNisSvc – 3
• WinDefend – 2

Disable Safe Mode – Boot in Normal mode

You can now close the Registry Editor and now go back on the Start menu. Right-click on it, select the run button, and type in “misconfig” and hit ok. Go to the Boot tab and uncheck the Safe Boot under the Boot options. Hit the apply button and ok button. Then, restart your computer.

Now, we are now back in the normal mode on Windows 11.

For us to check whether we have successfully disabled the Windows Security or Windows Defender on our Windows 11 OS, go back to the Start menu, search “Windows Security” and open that app.

You will notice that the Virus & threat protection, it will just be stuck on “Getting protection info…” and it will never load up the Windows Security service on your computer.

That’s basically it. Hopefully you were able to disable Windows Defender or Windows Security on Windows 11 through this article.

Comment down and let me know if everything worked for you.

Are you currently using Windows 10? We also have a guide in disabling Windows defender on Windows 10! Just click here.

If you had a hard time following the instructions, try watching this video tutorial right below:

Video Tutorial! (Turn off Windows Defender – Permanent)