I was working on my mother's computer and somehow Windows Defender got turned off.  There is spyware all over the computer, on every website popups, ads, highlighted words that lead to websites.  I tried turning on Windows Defender, but I get this message:  "An error has occurred in the program during initialization.  If this problem continues, please contact your system administrator."  Error Code: 0x80073afc

I would like to know how to get Windows Defender to work properly and to rid my mother's computer of all of this.  I tried system restore and it only goes back a couple of weeks.  I did Microsoft Safety Scanner, and it removed at least 2 viruses.

Hi McWeid,

According to your description ,it seems that the machine has been injected by virus .
I suggest to run the Microsoft Safety Scanner in safe mode .
To get into safe mode ,restart the machine and keep pressing "Shift",troubleshoot ,advanced ,startup settings ,then restart to choose safe mode with network.

Then we can run "dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth" or "sfc /scannow"to check the health of the whole system files .

Best r

Hi

I had a similar problem. When suddenly Windows Defender would not open and displayed the error Ox80073afc. Most forums suggested going into the registry and messing about with settings etc.

But what I did was did was a system restore going back to a date when I new it was working.

It took a long time for it to restore the system but once done everything worked better and windows defender was up and running again.

So try a System Restore

Good Luck