It probably has something to do with Defender now being the interface in
Vista (via ToolsSoftware Explorer) to Start-up programs, giving you the
ability to enable/disable/remove them without using the msconfig utlity. It
is shipped with Vista which probably shouldn't be taken out. I would try to
reinstall it from the web, then turn off the real time protection if you
really don't want it. But it is so unobtrusive now that you don't really
need to turn it off. And it will flag any serious threats, even stopping you
from inadvertantly downloading one.

"columbianna" wrote:

Can anyone help? About 3 weeks ago, I tried to change some of the startup
programs and was denied access. First off, I got tired of Windows Defender
never catching any of the spyware or other stuff so I decided to go with
AdAware and disable Windows Defender. Now, I can't enable Windows Defender
and when I try to get into my Startup programs I get this error message:
Windows Defender: Application failed to initialize: 0x80070002. I tried to
create a restore point to last month to see if that would help, but of course
I can't do that. Does anyone know how to fix this problem? Just for the
record, I HATE Windows Vista! If I still had Windows XP, I could have created
a restore point to last month that probably would have fixed this problem.