Forum Discussion
Windows Defender cannot be started on Windows Server 2012/2016 - must be manually started
SOLUTION FOUND: Remove Defender AV role on server. Add it again and the service starts.
Leon Laude Unfortunately, the script does not work as start-service, I guess it is doing basically the same as starting service via services.msc MMC.
Starting Defender via GUI is bad, but at least it works. On our machines running Windows Server 2016 Core I cannot get to run though.
Sounds troublesome indeed, in your case I'd raise a support request directly to Microsoft:
https://support.serviceshub.microsoft.com/supportforbusiness
- I ended up with in-place upgrading all 2016 core with this issue to Windows Server 2019 core.
That enabled the service properly.SOLUTION FOUND: Remove Defender AV role on server. Add it again and the service starts.
Appreciate this is a pretty old post now and you found a solution, but I was running across a similar issue to you when trying to start Defender on Server 2016 - interacting with the WinDefend service just errored every time. This post started me on the road to the ultimate solution, so many thanks!
Eventually I found success by running:
& 'C:\Program Files\Windows Defender\MpCmdRun.exe' -wdenableI used Process Monitor to see what Windows was up to when clicking the button - and this was one of the commands that were traced. I confirmed it in one of the MS articles - though it took some digging!
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/defender-endpoint/enable-update-mdav-to-latest-ws?view=o365-worldwide#re-enable-microsoft-defender-antivirus-on-windows-server-if-it-was-disabled
The above got everything going. Hopefully this will help someone else in a similar situation where GUI interaction is impractical/undesirable.
