Windows Defender, Disappearing Downloads

Posted by Luke Gilman

July 12, 2006

Just wanted to post this experience in case anyone else had run into it and might be googling for a solution - A few weeks ago I noticed that my desktop (HP running Windows XP media center) had developed an odd habit. Every time I downloaded an executable (.exe file) it disappeared without a trace. I could see it download, sometimes I could even see the icon appear in the directory I put it in for a fleeting second but then poof, it was gone. Nothing in the Recycle Bin, no history of the download. It did the same thing for Internet Explorer and for Firefox. I finally couldn’t stand it any longer and set out to fix it. After reinstalling the browser and finding the problem persisted I began to suspect the interference of another program. I opened up the Windows Task Manager and started killing suspicious processes one by one and attempting a download. Once I killed the MSMPEng.exe the download worked fine. Looking up MSMPEng.exe on www.liutilities.com I discovered Windows Defender was the culprit. I uninstalled it and everything works fine now. It’s still in Beta, so I guess I can’t get too hacked off about it.

Disappearing Downloads, Windows Defender

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