I woke up to an annoying sight. All my cracked Plugins were no longer activated. I checked Windows Defender, I saw a very long list of quarantined, blocked and removed threats. I have managed to restore and reinstall most of the VSTs, after disabling Widows Defender. However, Steinberg Plugins (Halion 7 and Hypersonic 2) are proving impossible to restore or reinstall. Also, I can no longer open WorPad documents. I am not sure what else to do to install Steinberg Steinberg Plugins. Meanwhile, Windows Defender is still running, even though I have disabled it with gpedit. Msc

 

Last edited: Mar 29, 2026 at 8:24 PM

Always add your VST3 folder, or whatever your main plugin folder is, to the exclusions list in Microsoft Defender. Disabling Defender isn’t the best way to prevent this, since Windows 11 updates can be very unpredictable. Even after major updates, this will help ensure your installed plugins don’t break.

 

3 words... Windows Super-Lite Image.

 

You need WUB and uninstall defender alltogether.
https://www.sordum.org/9470/windows-update-blocker-v1-8/
https://github.com/ionuttbara/windows-defender-remover
(just remove defender, not the other options, that would be a little too much)
Doing this for years now, started with 8 then 10 and now 11.
Defender never found any real threat. Only false positives.
Malware usually is socially engeneered (start this .exe to get acces to porn), and defender can't cure stupid anyways.

 

Yes, but you can get rid of that shit on a running machine, no need to start from scratch.

 

The key is to not install any of it to begin with - "Defender" firewall & "anti-virus" along with edge, all autonomous updating, ms store, etc, and all the rest of the malware that installs with an OEM image. There are plenty of third party replacements for those (on an internet connected machine) that DO NOT EXCHANGE TELEMETRY, or suck down worthless updates that change your machine config out from under you to suit microsoft. If you run a completely offline production machine then NONE of that crap is needed and it can all just hit the bit-bucket.

 

True, but most people already have a running system, plus there is a huge userbase who is scared of installing from scratch.
I don't unterstand why, but thats just how it is. For those WUB plus a DefenderUninstall-Script is an easy solution.
I personally would never use a stock installation, just like you, but there are a lot of people out there who do not wantt to deal with tech stuff.

 

I'm using this (free since last year) firewall manager since years with no issue. It supports rule groups and controls Windows firewall without need to uninstall it: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/vistafirewallcontrol/

I'm not big fan of 3rd party Windows tweaks tools. You never know what it breaks and when.