Is it possible to remove defender, antivirus and firewall from the latest Windows 10?

Question

Is it possible to fully remove components like defender, antivirus and firewall from the latest Windows 10 (version 1809)? I mean delete them like it never exists? It's annoying me a lot, even after disabling it starts to remind me that disabled. I wish them to be optional OS components like IIS for example.

Solution

WARNING: Removing Windows Defender will cause many dangerous effects in your PC. Disabling Anti-virus and Firewall makes your system vulnerable to malware and viruses. The procedure is irreversible, you may have to clean install Windows 10 OS from scratch to revert this change. DO NOT try this in any working PC.

The following procedure needs a working bootable Windows 10 USB or DVD drive. Insert the bootable drive in PC. Click on the "Repair your computer" option at the lower left corner. There will be a blue window with "Choose an option" heading. Click on the options one-by-one, Troubleshoot > Command prompt. Type these commands to delete the Windows Defender folders:

REM Change current directory to C: drive
cd /d C:\
rd /s /q "C:\Program Files\Windows Defender"
rd /s /q "C:\Program Files\Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection"
rd /s /q "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Defender"

REM These commands are optional
del C:\Windows\System32\smartscreen.exe
del C:\Windows\System32\SecurityHealthService.exe
del C:\Windows\System32\SecurityHealthHost.exe

Now close the Command Prompt, choose "Continue to Windows 10" option to boot current Windows 10 installation and eject the bootable drive safely. Here are the steps as flowchart:

Why do I not use Command Prompt in Windows 10 without a bootable drive?

Windows Defender will not allow the user to delete those folders even with the administrator account. See this article for more details on how to boot into bootable media Command Prompt.

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To disable Windows Firewall, use netsh command as administrator which allows all inbound and outbound connections. The command is: netsh advfirewall set allprofiles firewallpolicy allowinbound,allowoutbound. Alternatively, to remove Windows Firewall entirely, stop and delete the services associated with Windows Firewall with sc stop and sc delete commands as following:

REM Windows Defender Firewall Service
sc stop mpssvc & sc delete mpssvc

REM Windows Defender Firewall Authorization Driver
sc stop mpsdrv & sc delete mpsdrv

REM Base Filtering Engine Service
sc stop BFE & sc delete BFE

At last, repeat, THIS MAY BREAK YOUR LIFE COMPUTER.

Comments

[Ramhound]

Windows Firewall and Windows Defender cannot be removed from Windows 10. Windows 10 1703 isn't the current version of Windows 10 by the way.

[Alek Depler]

@ramhound, that's too bad. Useless components for home computers.

[Ramhound]

Worth pointing out you couldn't remove WIndows Firewall from Windows 7. You can only enable it or disable it. If you want to prevent the notifications then install a firewall and AV and you won't be asked to enable Windows Firewall and Windows Defender. My point is that Windows Firewall has been a feature that could not be removed since Windows XP SP2 and a Windows Defender was a feature since Windows 8.0. You have never been able to remove either feature only disable it.

[Moab]

I dislike the word "can't" of course they can be removed but the side effects could be ugly and irreversible without a clean install.

[DavidPostill]

Please quote the essential parts of the answer from the reference link(s), as the answer can become invalid if the linked page(s) change.

[Alek Depler]

Good one. What side effects will be after doing this?

[Biswapriyo]

@AlekDepler Your question is equivalent with this: Computer without antivirus.

[Ramhound]

The author already disabled Windows Defender and Windows Firewall. They want to actually remove the features, neither reference link you provided, indicate how to acomplish that.