Miners? Pretty sure no one claimed their miner program was disabling Windows Defender.
The fact WD is tagging a miner program merely suggests the miner program is doing something in an unusual, thus suspicious way. Should WD know that particular miner program is legit? Probably. Do you expect WD (or any security program) to automatically know every single legitimate program out there - even every time they are updated? I don't.
BTW, are you reporting that miner program to Microsoft as legit? If not, then you are part of the problem.
I agree with that. But it just does always work that way with computers in general.
My ISP sent out an update to my cable box/DVR. Suddenly all my scheduled programs had to be rescheduled. Half of my installed programs on this Windows computer I have to tell the installer I want it installed on D drive, not C. That's not Windows fault.
When there are major changes to a program, I can see where defaults may be reset.
As for UAC, as I said above, mine have never been changed back. Other changes I make stick.
As for enabling WD when you have disabled it AND you have no AV installed, I think MS is erring on the right side of that one - not you.
No, never claimed my miner disabled WD, nor did RTB suggest that. He was saying probably none of your machines have mining applications installed, and you have purposely disabled WD on them.
I wouldn't mind reporting my miner as a legit trusted program, but I've never heard of that before. That said, most, if not all, antivirus solutions are now treating all mining software in general as viruses, mostly due to their widespread illegitimate use as of late, such as ads or entire websites designed to siphon your computer's resources to mine for them in the background, without the user knowing. AV developers started to block mining programs because of that, but for those of us who use them in a legitimate way, it becomes a bit of a pain in the ass. But there it is again, works for the many, creates an issue for the few. This is a bit of a different situation than Windows just rolling over your own configuration, though...
As for your installer, I see no problem with that. Every program has a default location to be installed, and there's usually a way to change that. I have to tell Steam to install my games to D when I download a new game, because Steam itself resides on C, but most games go to D. That's fine. It happens once, goes where it's supposed to, and stays there. Now, if I told Steam to install 7 Days to Die to D, and then it goes there, and then a week later the game picks itself up and goes to C instead, then there might also be a threat titled "What the hell, Steam?".
As for UAC, I can't comment much on what happened there. It's one of the first things I do when setting up a fresh installation of Windows, because I don't want the UAC prompt coming up a million times per day because I decided to run ccleaner or something. I suspect it was changed when the spring update was installed, so I changed it back, and then it seemed to have reset itself again. It's off now, so we'll see what happens.
As for re-enabling WD when I have disabled it, and having no other AV installed... is Microsoft right for that? No. Is it generally a good idea to run a computer with no AV software? No, but then again, not to say I'm invulnerable, but I'm not your average user. More to the point, I specifically made a change in the group policy editor to disable it completely, and Microsoft still found a way to re-enable it. Bottom line is, regardless of what Microsoft thinks I should do, or what my settings should look like, it's my business what I do with my computer. If I don't want to run an AV software, that's my business, and Microsoft shouldn't be mucking around with my computer because they know better than I do. You can do a lot of things in life, with or without a computer, that may not be a good idea, but that doesn't give anybody the right to stop you or go around messing with your stuff. Maybe a little warning, but beyond that, no.
To that last point, at every reboot, Windows also nags me about also having Windows Firewall disabled. It's a little pop-up window in the bottom right that goes away whenever I click on the little x, and then it doesn't bother me again until I reboot again. That much, I'm fine with. If Microsoft also included a message in the same window about WD being disabled, I'd be okay with that too, moreso if there was a way to completely disable that pop-up (there may or may not be, I haven't looked), and moreso than that if it was made immediately obvious, such as a check box for a "don't show me this again" option. Somehow, even after the update, Windows Firewall remains disabled, yet WD came back, despite group policy settings. I'm okay with the naggy popup because it doesn't automatically change anything (especially silently without my knowledge). I'm not okay with WD reviving itself because I specifically disabled it, and now it's back.
Never had an issue with defender tagging mining programs, been mining for a few years and used probably 10-12 different programs, none of them have been tagged by defender on win 7 or 10.
I haven't had an issue with it either, until I ran a full scan. It was only then that WD found them and said they were viruses... which makes me question how good WD is as an AV solution in the first place. What if there were actual viruses? They've been running for quite some time now, and WD hadn't picked up on it until I ran a full scan. They're right there fully loading both my video cards and my CPU all the time.
This is why I like the free edition of MBAM. I do use that much to scan things I download before I install/run them. It's much like having somebody inspect packages that arrive in the mail under my supervision to see if they like them or not, rather than having somebody living in my house, and they keep removing my TV every day because they don't like it.
