Windows Defender Antivirus disabled by Anti-Malware software!

[Scryder]

So I noticed my PC was running a bit slow yesterday. While doing my usual checks, and when I went to see my anti-virus software, Windows Defender Antivirus, I noticed it was disabled. After looking through, turned out Spybot Search & Destroy is pretending to be my anti-virus software! One problem, I use the free version of Spybot, which does not have the anti-virus functionality (Only the paid for version has this). After spending a good few hours trying to troubleshoot without any success, I decided to uninstall Spybot. Internet search was no help.

Got a couple of questions:

1. Is Spybot Search & Destroy still safe? Last I checked up was a few years ago.
2. If so, is there a way to install Spybot and not have it pretend to be something it's not; namely my AV software?

All this seems to have happened recently when I did a re-install of Spybot with the latest version. Did that as the scan kept crashing out when i clicked "Fix selected"

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Jonj1611]

I would use something else, its had its day I think :

https://uk.pcmag.com/antivirus/46640...search-destroy

Then again nothing in pcmag seems to rate that highly, Windows Defender is supposed to be ok these days so you could just stick with that and run something like hitman pro on demand

[xxdeanoxx]

I would choose AVG free with Malwarebytes free personally. I haven't used Search and Destroy for a very long time.

[Jonj1611]

Any reason you choose them over the free built in windows firewall and defender?

[Scryder]

I would use something else, its had its day I think :

https://uk.pcmag.com/antivirus/46640...search-destroy

Then again nothing in pcmag seems to rate that highly, Windows Defender is supposed to be ok these days so you could just stick with that and run something like hitman pro on demand

Thanks for the link Jonj1611, it was enlightening. Yeah, maybe Spybot has had it's day. Is Hitman Pro a paid software? I googled it and seems to be the case... I do use MBAM to do manual scans and it seems to work OK. Not a fan of paying annually.

What annoyed me was the fact that Windows Defender thought that Spybot had an antivirus when it didn't (I saw the "Buy Spybot Antivirus" button everywhere when I installed the latest version). Left my PC totally exposed, and I didn't realise till I looked manually. If I didn't look, it would've been left like that for a lot longer.

Edit: Is there another free Anti-Malware scanner? I'd like to double check in case MBAM misses something.

[Jonj1611]

Yeah seems to be, I am sure it wasn't always like that.

Adwcleaner or SuperAntiSpyware free edition would do the job though think adwcleaner was recently bought by malwarebytes.