Microsoft Defender: Here’s how to prevent antivirus from dragging down your PC’s performance

While a bug leads to misuse of Intel processors by Microsoft Defender, users are still waiting for a fix from the Redmond firm. Luckily, developer Kevin Glynn has made available a perfectly working little utility as a temporary solution. We explain how to use it.

Yesterday, we brought you some very bad news: as effective as it is, Microsoft Defender has a considerable impact on the performance of the PCs on which it is used. Specifically, it appears that only Intel processors are affected by the issue. AMD chips, for their part, are visibly spared. Still, the problem affects many users, today awaiting a patch deployed by the Redmond firm.

Only here, the latter has not yet communicated on the subject, suggesting that this fix could well take some time to arrive. As often in this kind of situation, the Windows community then manages on its own to develop a way around the problem. That’s exactly what happened, thanks to the work of developer Kevin Glynn who came to the rescue of users affected by the bug.

Related: Windows Defender Is Almost Useless Without an Internet Connection

How to prevent Microsoft Defender from impacting your PC’s performance

Counter Control: this is the name of this small utility capable of correcting the Microsoft Defender bug. The latter first allows you to verify that your PC is affected by the problem and then, if necessary, to ensure that performance is no longer impacted by the antivirus. The icing on the cake: the effectiveness of the protection is not reduced by the application. So here’s how to use it:

• Go to this link to download Counter Control
• Open the app (you don’t need to install it)
• Now see the column Current. If it displays the code 0x222it means that Microsoft Defender is causing your PC’s performance to drop
• Then click on Reset Counters. The utility should now display the code 0x330

You don’t have to do anything more. As soon as this code is displayed, your PC is functioning normally, without a drop in performance. Counter Control is therefore a powerful and efficient application, the only defect of which is that it must be executed at each start-up in order to function correctly. Note that all processors released since 2008 are supported.