[wasabinator]

I wonder what privilege level this service runs at. If it's less than ring 0, i think some blame needs to go to Windows itself. If it's ring 0, did it really need to be that high??

Surely an OS doesn't have to go completely kaput due to one service crashing.

[Kwpolska]

It's not a service, it's a driver. "Anti"malware drivers typically run with a lot of permissions to allow spying on all processes. Driver failures likely mean the kernel state is borked as well, so Windows errs on the side of caution and halts.