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Windows Defender cannot be started on Windows Server 2012/2016 - must be manually started
Hi all, Replacing Sophos AV with Defender ATP. Have a problem with defender service (via GPO or services mmc) is not automatically starting after uninstalling Sophos. I must go into Defender GUI...
SOLUTION FOUND: Remove Defender AV role on server. Add it again and the service starts.
I ended up with in-place upgrading all 2016 core with this issue to Windows Server 2019 core.
That enabled the service properly.
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!
Enable Defender 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.
