Do I need to disable antivirus software before installing Windows 11? – Easy Steps

An antivirus is essential on a Windows system. There are many different antivirus applications that you can choose from. They run on your desktop like any other application, but have much higher read / write privileges than any other application. They are basically guardians of what can and cannot run on your system.

Disable antivirus software before installing Windows 11

If you are installing Windows 11 and wondering if your antivirus will cause problems, the easiest way to find out is to start the update. Ideally, if your antivirus is having trouble updating, it will block it when you try to start it. You can whitelist the process or you can disable your antivirus before updating.

However, in some cases, the update may start and fail in a later step. It can fail only with an error code and without a clear sign that the antivirus blocked it. It is generally more difficult to determine if the update process is interrupted in the middle. In this case, you can try the following.

See forums and Antivirus product page

It is always best to do this before starting the update process. Visit the product page to find out which antivirus it uses. Check for updates on Windows 11. A good antivirus will have whitelisted the operating system and its files. If there is a problem or a process that allows you to smoothly upgrade to Windows 11 while keeping your antivirus running, the product page or forums should tell you about it.

On that note, check if other users are having trouble updating to Windows 11 with antivirus running. If so, it is best to disable it while the update is in progress.

Enable Windows Defender

You can temporarily disable antivirus and enable Windows Defender instead. The Windows 11 upgrade process might believe that a system that is not running Windows Defender is unsafe. Windows Defender will not block the update and is a reasonably good antivirus. Disable your third-party antivirus in favor of Windows Defender. Once the update is complete, you can go back to using your preferred tool.

Clean install of Windows 11

If you are planning a clean installation of Windows 11, the antivirus installed on your system in the current operating system, whatever the operating system, is irrelevant. The antivirus will not run when you start the clean install and as such cannot interrupt the installation process.

Disk virus protection

You should know that there is a difference between antivirus and disk protection. An antivirus is an application that runs on an operating system such as Windows 10. For it to work, it must have its environment, that is, Windows 10 running.

Disk protection is protection that is applied to a disk in the form of encryption. A disk cannot be accessed, once encrypted or password protected, unless the password is provided or decrypted. Disk protection does not depend on the presence of an operating system to function. You may have applied disk protection through a desktop operating system, but it will work outside of it as well.

If you are upgrading to Windows 11 and you cannot access or write to a disk, you may have applied some kind of protection that you need to remove first.

conclusion

So far, Windows 11 updates have been smooth. They remain low in numbers, and many users choose to stick with Windows 10, which is now considerably more stable. That being said, your antivirus shouldn’t cause you any problems just yet. If the installation fails, check the logs and errors that can tell you why it failed.