I have never used any third-party antivirus on my system for protection. The reason behind it is the excellent working of Windows Defender, which is available as a built-in security suite for Windows 11/10. It works in the same strategy as some other antivirus in its class does, and the best thing is that you don’t need to pay for it. But today, while working on my laptop, I received the following Microsoft Defender error, here is the screenshot:
In the dialog box, Windows says that Windows Defender is subjected to an unexpected problem. The error code given was 0x80508020. As soon as I clicked Close in the error dialog, I received another error prompt:
This time, Windows said that it couldn’t turn on real-time protection followed by error code 0x800705b4. So in order to resolve both the errors, I start my troubleshooting steps from Registry Editor as it gives an instant fix. Eventually, I reached a saturation point, from where I fixed this errors for Windows Defender in few seconds. Here is how:
Fix Windows Defender Error 0x80508020, 0x800705b4
1. Press Windows Key + R combination, type put Regedt32.exe in Run dialog box and hit Enter to open the Registry Editor.
2. Navigate to the following location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender
3. In the right pane of this location, you’ll see DisableAntiSpyware named DWORD there having the Value data as 1. This DWORD is the root cause of both the errors which I received. So, double click on the DWORD to modify its Value data:
4. In the above box, replace the Value data to 0 from 1. Click OK. Alternatively, you can delete the Windows Defender key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender
from the left pane of the image shown in step 2. Finally, reboot the system and Windows Defender will start protecting your Windows 8 without any hitch.
Hope you find the fix useful!
