Vista - Windows Defender tray icon just popped up w/ exclamation point and cant get rid of it

I use SEP 11 and it automatically disabled Defender.

If you use free version of Avira it does NOT have spyware protection.

Avira AntiVir Personal - FREE Antivirus

Thanks Axon, besides I'm only a dial-up user, so the chances of me getting bogged down with unwanted intruders is much slimmer than most!

my product did the same and i use vodafone modem for my interent and only get 2g so not mutch goes into my system does make updates along time tough

Hi there xringx
I had the same problem. Defender was showing in the system tray with the exclamation point. Lately, I see Defender updates in Windows Update and there is no Defender icon to accompany it. In the Windows Update history, I have about 30 updates since April all of them under KB915597.
Do you have Defender updates in your Windows Update history?
Anyway, try this MS KB article on troubleshooting Defender updates:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918355
Get the updates direct and download them from
http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/ADL.aspx
It worked for me so good luck !
Let us know.....

Hi,
same problem here... I did not think of downloading the update separately because the dumb thing kept saying there were no updates needed. That exclamation point was just too annoying!!! I think this worked, at least for now the thing vanished.. shall see tomorrow. For now, I thank you for your idea. ciao

For the first time the same phenom showed up for me yesterday... exclamation point-ridden icon would not go away; opening it to click to initiate a definitions update produced a "none available" message. Over and over. Yet the defs on file were more than two weeks old. Looked to me like newer ones had failed to make it into my machine.

I write this to reconfirm that the basics of a solution contributed earlier in this forum have fixed the problem (for now at least). I used - and kept - this link to MS itself

How to manually download the latest definition updates for Windows Defender

On that page go to the directions for either 32 or 64 bit Vista (whichever you have) and there's a download link for the current defs installer. You save it onboard, then run it.

After the install, run a full scan with Defender and that's the fix. The defs installer can be discarded.

BTW, I have run both Defender and Avast without conflict from day one of this laptop. Not really 100% sure but I do think it's good to have both Defender and a separate always-on antivirus. (The laptop came with the bloatware Norton antivirus on it.) I think that each can pick up some malware items the other won't.