Unable to turn on virus protection

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On Windows 10 on my laptop I recently turned off real time protection, cloud delivered protection, and automatic sample submission. Now when I try to turn any of them back on I am told that only my "IT administrator" can do so. Needless to say I am the only person logging on to my laptop. How do I fix this ?
 
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An update on this is that the virus protection service is now turned off. When I try to restart the service it always fails. How can I fix this ?
 
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Do you have another antivirus or security solution already installed?
 
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Is your user id that of an administrator? If not do you have an administrator ID you can use to restart the AV system?
 
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Is your user id that of an administrator? If not do you have an administrator ID you can use to restart the AV system?

My user id is a local account but is not the admin account. I can however open a program as admin. Do I have to log in with the Admin account in order to start the AV system ? If I do try to start it under my local account login I get: Error 0x80070005: Access is denied.
 
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Sounds like you have picked up some malware that is preventing you from turning your AV back on.
You could try Malwarebytes its free might help you. No Idea what AV program you're using so I would work with the manufacture on recovering your computer. Hopefully, you have your data backed up as the simple answer is to Clean Install and start over
 
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Sounds like you have picked up some malware that is preventing you from turning your AV back on.
You could try Malwarebytes its free might help you. No Idea what AV program you're using so I would work with the manufacture on recovering your computer. Hopefully, you have your data backed up as the simple answer is to Clean Install and start over

I ran the Microsoft Safety Scanner on my entire system. It took about 9-10 hours, but found nothing. That does not mean that you are wrong, but I suspect the problem is something else. I mentioned another problem at https://www.windows10forums.com/thr...ile-checker-result-problem.20103/#post-100722, so maybe solving that will solve this problem.
 
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I solved the system file checker problem but I am still experiencing this problem where I can not turn on Windows Defender virus protection.
 
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You might solve this by logging in as the "actual" administrator. Windows is odd about some things like this and requires the user ID to actually BE administrator. Pull up control panel and go to users. Turn ON the admin account (if it's switched off) and apply a password if you haven't already set one. Now log off and log back in as "administrator" using your new password. Now try to turn everything back on. I think you'll find that it works. If it does, do what you need and go back and then turn off the admin user, logoff and log in using your normal login credentials. Hopefully all will now be well.
 
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In response to the post of the av system not being able to turn it on that's make sure like 100% that another third-party software could have installed a antivirus that you might not be aware of some software's give you a antivirus software free bundled in other software's job first make sure that that did not happen most likely you have one installed then the other thing you should check is to make sure you have turned it on by typing window defender in the search box on your PC bottom-left then to have it activated online which gives you the benefits of being up-to-date on the time if this is not help you should consider looking how come you're not the administrator of the PC hope this helps you good luck
 
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You might solve this by logging in as the "actual" administrator. Windows is odd about some things like this and requires the user ID to actually BE administrator. Pull up control panel and go to users. Turn ON the admin account (if it's switched off) and apply a password if you haven't already set one. Now log off and log back in as "administrator" using your new password. Now try to turn everything back on. I think you'll find that it works. If it does, do what you need and go back and then turn off the admin user, logoff and log in using your normal login credentials. Hopefully all will now be well.

I do not know how to login as the actual Administrator. How do I go about doing that ? I do not have the password of the actual administrator ( my bad ). I updated from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10, and idiotically enough I never wrote down anywhere the Windows 8.1 admin password, and luckily in Windows 8.1 I never had any need of it.

I did try to create another local account with Admin priveleges, just like the account I currently login to. But the same problem and error trying to start the Windows Defender Antivirus Service occurred.
 
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In response to the post of the av system not being able to turn it on that's make sure like 100% that another third-party software could have installed a antivirus that you might not be aware of some software's give you a antivirus software free bundled in other software's job first make sure that that did not happen most likely you have one installed then the other thing you should check is to make sure you have turned it on by typing window defender in the search box on your PC bottom-left then to have it activated online which gives you the benefits of being up-to-date on the time if this is not help you should consider looking how come you're not the administrator of the PC hope this helps you good luck

First of all I do have Admin priveleges logging in to my local account. Clicking on my icon in the Windows menu and choosing "Change Account Settings" shows that I am an Administrator.

Secondly while I appreciate your telling me that I probably have some other third party antivirus software installed, how can I find it ? Nothing shows up by name among the list of Apps that says anything about being a 3rd party antivirus program, and I have no recall that I ever installed such a program. While this is not directed at you at all, who are trying to help me, I find it incredible that Windows Defender Antivirus Service gives me an error code when I try to start it, there is no documentation what this error code means, and even if it means that another antivirus program is installed there is absolutely no indication what this program would be or even how the Windows Defender Antivirus Service even determines that this other antivirus program exists. So I am a little piqued about this sort of nonsense, of some obscure error code which nobody understands, still coming from Microsoft after nearly 30 years of Windows.

I do not see how I am supposed to activate Windows Defender Antivirus Service online, or even what good this is supposed to do me locally under Windows 10. Would you care to explain ? Other Windows Defender services, like the Windows Defender Firewall, are running fine.
 
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Hi. So... admin login asccount...

You will first need to turn ON the admin account as by default it is turned OFF. Near the Start button on the main taskbar, you should see a search icon. Click this and Cortana will pop up. In the window at the bottom where it says "Search Windows" type: Control Panel You will see "Control Panel Desktop App" come up. Double-click this to launch Control Panel. When the Control Panel window pops up, go to Administration Tools, then Computer Management. Expand the Local Users and Groups part of the tree and then click USERS. You should see the Administrator Account here in the window that pops up. First, right click the Admin Account and SET PASSWORD. Put in a password that you can remember. (You'll get a warning but continue anyway). Right-click the admin account again and go to Properties. Untick "Account is disabled". The admin account will now be active. Ok, and close all the windows then reboot the machine. You will now see the Admin account come up on the start screen as a selection of users. Click this account and enter your new password. You are now the true ADMIN user when logged in. I think you will find that you can now do what you need to do. Remember, once you're done, log off again. Log in as your normal user and go back in and disable the admin account. Hope I've made all this clear! :)
 

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