Me too! and i've spent the last 2 hours trying to figure out what to do. I'm
running Vista 32 bit version. A worm took out my system, and I had it fixed
at the shop but defender has never run since. I get "Windows Defender
encountered an error: 0x800106ba. A problem caused this program's service ot
stop. To start the service, restart your computer or search Help and Support
for how to start a service manually."
Great.. restarting ddn't work. So I found defender's property value and
sure enough, was already set to "auto" so that fix didn't work, either.
Another source I found on the web said to uninstall it, and I go to the list
of programs, and Defender isn't there to uninstall. Can't figure it out, so
download a new copy, which aborts:
"You do not need to install this software because Windows Defender is
included in Windows Vista. You can access Windows Defender from the Security
section of the Windows Control Panel."
I've moved, and don't have access to my techy guy again. As far as I know, I
have Microsoft Security Essentials. When trying to uninstall Defender I saw a
program called "Protector Suite QL 5.6" but i have no idea what it does and
it doesn't give me the option to uninstall it, either.