Reference number: CH000864

How do I disable my antivirus program in Windows?

Question:

How do I disable my antivirus program in Windows?

Additional information:

• This document contains information about temporarily disabling an antivirus program, if you wish to permanently disable or uninstall a antivirus program see document CH000347 for uninstalling program information.
• See our antivirus dictionary definition for additional information and related information.

Answer:

The answer to this question really depends on the antivirus program that is installed on your computer. However, thankfully all antivirus protection programs can be temporarily disabled by following the below steps.

1. Locate the antivirus protection program icon on the systray. Below are some examples of what your program icon may look like. Additional examples can be found on document CHSYS. Also moving the mouse over each of the icons and will also display what each of the icons are.
   
   
   McAfee, Norton, and AVG examples.
    
2. Once the antivirus icon has been located right-click the icon and select disable, stop, or something similar. In some cases you may need to launch or open the program control center and disable the program from the menu that appears.

If following the above recommendations do not help you with disabling your antivirus scanner you can also boot into Safe Mode, which will not load any third-party programs including the antivirus program. This is helpful for times you're concerned about the antivirus program interrupting a program during an install.

Additional information about booting into safe  mode can be found on document CHSAFE.