Exit Antivirus Software

Many times we would want to install Software or perform actions which require us to close Antivirus programs running in the background, but we are not able to close the Antivirus Software as many do not have the exit option.

This post will help Exit or Disable Antivirus!

Solution 1:

1. Press Windows + R or click the start button, type run and press Enter
2. Type ‘services.msc‘ in the command prompt. This will open Services window to start, stops and configure Windows services.
3. Locate your Antivirus program from the list and stop the Antivirus program with the help of the right click.
And woah!
There might be cases where you cannot stop the Antivirus program with ‘Services’ with the ‘stop’ option being disabled.

Solution 2:

If the above solution does not work, use customized approach for different Antivirus software:

Symantec / Norton Antivirus:
1. Go to the Command Prompt by pressing Windows + R and typing cmd or go to start, type cmd and then run as administrator
2. Use “smc -stop” command to stop the Antivirus service
 
If this command did not work then probably either the Antivirus service has not started yet or you have set a password to access the service
 
– If the service has not yet started, use “start smc -stop” command
– If you have set a password, use “smc [-p <password> ]-stop” command
– Replace ‘stop’ with ‘start’ to start the services again.
 
Bitdefender:
1. Open the Command Prompt
2. Use “bdagent /stop” command to stop the services and “bdagent /start” to start the services


Avast Antivirus:

For Avast Antivirus, Solution 1 should work.

Panda Security:

To stop Panda Security, run the Command Prompt as Administrator and type following commands:

sc stop psinport
sc stop psinaflt
sc stop nanoservicemain

McAfee Antivirus:

Use commands “net stop McAfee McShield” to stop and “net start McAfee McShield” to start McAfee services. This article will help you manually remove McAfee security.

AVG and ESET NOD32 allows you to temporarily disable the protection under their settings section.