So I was looking over a friends laptop that has vista..I've only toyed with vista very little..but I know there is something wrong, when 'freshly' installed programs work fine during the session and then upon restart the desktop link is no longer valid,or when you search and 'install' updates with windows update the 'same' 2 updates appear again(with successful install message and all)..or when you run task manager its a very stripped down 'dialog' on showing only 'user' run programs ie process only run in session.. so I went to run 'windows defender'..ahh a icon on the desktop..
hmm wtf "Window Defender for PC" thats not it..and that sounds shadily close to "WindowsDefender" with a service and everything..Windefend... and strange be it that the Windows Defender service is mysteriously gone..I did a few virus scan one by manualy downloading the sep release of windows malicious software removal tool..so there is 'many' things wrong with his OS..

But this is about Windows Defender..
This is how I reenabled it
so after cleaning some of the above I hit on the idea to re-install windows defender,THAT DIDN'T WORK as the setup would say 'Cannot Install as windows vista Comes with Windows defender..or something to that effect" so then I hit another idea..I clicked the link on the desktop and got the file name that the link is a shortcut to 'msascui' then I used advanced 'search to find msascui.exe' and low and behold it was in the "C:\Program Files\dm\" along with the rest of the files for windows defender. So I change the Folder name to Windows Defender and restart and Windows defender is back and kicking.. I still need to figure out what is wrong with task manager,but small steps..later..

BanMe

I know, old post but just wanted to put in my 2 cents, the Giant Antispyware package was far superior, until M$ got their hands on it - I don't believe they ever intended it to be useful, as their marketing scheme was to sell "protection subscriptions" along with their revolutionary new OS, well we all now know how that turned out. I've never had a Defender installation stay operable for more than a month and I don't visit the kind of sites that would lay me waste for infection, the last and only infection I've gotten was from a coworker's thumb drive - conflicker - NOD32 didn't even blink - and the best advice I could find on the web was to disable autoplay - problem was if you stopped any usb drive before yanking it - bingo it became infected also, had to hunt it down and stomp it manually.

Good luck with Vista - I cant wait for Win 7 I've got a perfectly good laptop thats useless because some of the software I need to work won't run correctly on it.

SiGiNT

SiGiNT, Microsoft never sold a subscription for Defender. Defender and its signatures have always been free.
And regarding malware and infections, Defender won't help protect you against that since it's an anti-spyware program, not an anti-malware program.

Didn't mean they intended to sell it, just make it useless so their retail protection was more attractive - my opinion of all of the anti- spyware, malware, virii packages are that they are pretty useless.

SiGiNT

But Microsoft doesn't offer a for-pay anti-spyware product. The only anti-spyware product Microsoft offerd is Defender, which is free.

Ahh, I understand your view, but they did debate for several months about charging for a subscription, and Vista, (Millennium II), was supposed to be bullet proof for malware, which turned out to be not true, and Defender proved to be very vulnerable - like I said, I hope all of the reviews about version 7 are true, solves many problems for me. I'm not about to spend a week to try and gather compatible drivers for my very good 64Bit laptop to allow it to run on XP Pro, putting, Vista 64 on a machine that's meant for the general public is idiocy, just more money for M$. Already "downgraded" my Vista home premium to XP Pro and that takes about a week to find the drivers - especially the network chip set

SiGiNT

PS: Spybot SD is still free and works better.

Yes, much to the chagrin of many technical people, Microsoft's advertising department did over-tout Vista's defenses against malware
FWIW, I've been using Windows 7 for a few months now and have been quite happy with it. It's no more "bullet proof" than Vista (or XP) when it comes to malware, but it's a nice OS overall