Quote Originally Posted by Sven Viking View Post
While the problem may be solved for 40DonZ01 and others who eventually find this post, the fact that the free version of Spybot currently unavoidably disables Windows virus protection without informing the user and without itself providing real-time virus protection, and prevents it from being re-enabled without uninstalling Spybot or using a registry editor, is still a problem. Spybot should basically be detecting itself as malware that compromises system security at this point.
Well I'm not sure what happened but the issue seems to have been fixed in 2020 and the re-presented itself here in June 2022. Fortunately I found this thread, but heartily concur with Sven's comments above. Imagine the fun I'm about to have trying to walk my wife through registry edits over the internet, since I am on an extended work trip right now...