A Defender update has eaten my system, and I need to remove it, but Defender updates don't show up in my Updates list, and I'm running Vista so I can't uninstall the whole program. I've disabled Defender, which did something but didn't actually fix the problem. My whole system is borked, and I can only work in Safe Mode. Can anyone help me out?

Hi, Based on the situation, you can try the options on startup repair to check if this will enable you to log in to system. Regards,Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

I'm sorry--I see I wasn't precise: I can actually boot up in normal mode, but once it begins loading the startup programs the system hangs. It'll hang up for several minutes, run for a second or two, then rehang for several more minutes, and so on, ad infinitum, so although I can technically start the computer in normal mode, it doesn't actually run. I have tried startup repair, in the hope that it might fix something, but it didn't find anything. I've tried running system restores as well, but the restore won't complete regardless of what restore point I try. Thank you very much for the reply, though!