Originally Posted by
mlt503
This may be a bit late but I experienced the same problem on my Toshiba
laptop running Vista Home / 32 bit OS.
I tried all the solutions online but nothing helped fix the irritating
0x800106ba error that Defender would put up when I tried to launch it
using the icon in Control Panel.
The fix that worked for me was to go to Start/Control
Panel/Administrative Tools/Services.
I found Windefend (or Windows Defender) and left-clicked, then
right-clicked to bring up the pull-down menu. Clicked on Properties and
changed the status from manual to automatic!
I re-booted TWICE (because it was advised on one of the forums) and
it's running fine now.
Now if your Defender is already set to automatic and you're seeing the
same error, I would change it to manual, go thru ALL the above steps
(and try not to be too impatient) and then change it to automatic,
reboot twice and see what happens.
As a side note, my version of Vista won't allow un-installing Update
KB931099 to fix this problem.
Keep trying, the great feeling you get when you troubleshoot this
successfully may be the highlight of your day.
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