Why does my antivirus turn off

And if you open up the antivirus, you should see more info regarding its status. Other than that, you could get strange errors when trying to launch the antivirus and watch the window closing without you having any option to select.

And you might have to click on the small arrow next to these symbols to expand the system tray and get to see the icon of your antivirus software. Ideally, you should configure the system tray so that you can always see the antivirus icon in the status area without having to click on anything. If the antivirus icon is nowhere to be found within the notification area, it could be something wrong with the antivirus software, though not necessarily because of some virus.

The tray icon may be missing even when dealing with some registry issues, which requires further investigation. Before getting the answer to this question, you should know how viruses disable antivirus software in the first place:. There are all sorts of malware out there that can tamper with your antivirus settings.

In some cases, trojans can even uninstall your antivirus software altogether. Then, there is malware that can run a false app pretending to be your antivirus software.

Specifically, you could end up seeing a false notification that your antivirus is turned off. This will lead you to download some malicious software or even fool you into paying for rogue antivirus software. It can lead to all sorts of conflicts and errors that might make your system protection either less effective or completely ineffective. Not only that, but it can also make your device crash. Let me put it this way: antiviruses take up system resources and scan everything that happens on your device.

Not for something that is supposed to give you enhanced protection, but for something that will lead to a vicious circle. BullGuard AV spots a fishy file and decides to copy it to a temporary location for further scanning and inspection. Think that the Bitdefender AV will sit around and do nothing? In the previous section, we mentioned how to disable many third-party antivirus programs and that some of them require more than a few clicks in the Windows notification area.

Microsoft Security Essentials is one of the special cases we get asked about frequently. To turn protection back on, follow these steps again and check the box next to Turn on real-time protection. If the recommendations above did not help you disable your antivirus scanner, you can boot into Safe Mode , which doesn't load any third-party programs, including your antivirus program. Booting into Safe Mode is helpful when you're concerned about the antivirus program interrupting another program during an installation.

Viruses can also prevent you from going online to update or reinstall your antivirus software. For troubleshooting help, see What to do if your antivirus software stops working. Skip to main content. July 25, Why does my AV software keep turning off?

Eve Blakemore. You might have a virus Some viruses can disable your antivirus software or disable updates to your antivirus software.