If you see Microsoft Defender using CPU even while you have other antivirus tools installed and want to stop it, head here and ensure the Periodic scanning feature is set to “Off.” If it doesn’t bother you, feel free to enable Periodic scanning-it’s another layer of protection and additional security. Right-click on any such process and select Search online. Under the Processes tab, look for the one that is suspiciously using a large amount of system resources. On this same screen, you can expand “Microsoft Defender Antivirus options” and enable “Periodic scanning.” Defender will then perform regular background scans even while you’re using another antivirus program, providing a second opinion and potentially catching things your main antivirus might miss. Here are the steps to identify a malicious process in the Task Manager: Right-click on the taskbar and select Task Manager from the list. However, there is a way to use both your antivirus program of choice and Microsoft Defender. RELATED: How to Periodically Scan Your Computer With Windows Defender While Using Another Antivirus The process may run in the background, but it shouldn’t use CPU or disk resources attempting to scan your system. This means that Windows Defender is disabled. If you head to Windows Security > Virus & threat protection, you’ll see a message saying “You’re using other antivirus providers” if you have another antivirus program installed and activated.

The user will at a glance see detailed report on each task/process and quarantine or remove spyware, malware, keyloggers, and Trojans.

If you do have another antivirus program installed (like Avira or BitDefender), Microsoft Defender will automatically disable itself and get out of your way. Security Task Manager is a desktop application, produced by Neuber Software GmbH that detects all tasks/processes running on the computer and displays their ranking according to their security risk rating.

Security task manager