[AStonesThrow]

Yeah so like, every time I ran AV software it was quite obvious where the paranoia settings were, and how to tone down the aggressive "scan everything everywhere every time" settings.

For 98% of systems, there is probably no reason to scan every file on opening it. If people have enabled that setting, or left that default on, then that's their problem; it's not Windows Defender's fault.

My current AV dashboards are screaming at me that I'm only 35% protected. That's because I've exercised a lot of prudence in enabling paranoid settings, based on my rather limited and simplistic threat modeling. Installing AV software comes with the understanding that it can steal resources, but they nearly always have plenty of settings that can be disabled and win back your system responsiveness.

I am beginning to believe that commenters giving bingo-card winnings are not the brightest bulbs in the Windows MCSE pool, honestly. I can relate: Linux and Unix admin in general is far more intuitive and comfortable for me, so I have generally stayed on that side of things, but knowing how to properly set up Windows is an indispensable life skill for anyone.

[musjleman]

> If people have enabled that setting, or left that default on, then that's their problem; it's not Windows Defender's fault.

There is no such setting for Defender. The file scanning is either on or defender is completely off. To even access some of the better stuff like ASR rules (that are disabled by default) you need third-party software or pay for their enterprise offering.

Consumer Defender literally has like 4 toggles in total. It's a dumbed down and extremely permissive AV because it runs on every Windows machine.