Defender Control: disable the official Microsoft spyware in your system with this tool: https://www.sordum.org/9480/defender-control-v1-6/ 

Ah, and Captain TLDR reports for duty again. Yeay!

Windows Defender is NOT a standalone product. It's just an elaborate way of keeping Windows more protected (dating back to the XP days - brrr) and I'll even go one step further...

Windows defender might give a safe feeling (and it actually makes you a little safer), but it also comes with a price. ESPECIALLY when it starts one of its scheduled scans. You can change that, but still. I always chose just to disable it completely (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Turn-Windows-Defender-on-or-off , or Google for yourself). My method is a little different: I just disable its service completely (start - search - services.msc).

What to do about protection? Well, as a safety guard I often use SystemProtect (http://www.pcrx.com/system_protect/). SystemProtect monitors your Windows system files, and does this very smart. For a completely safe (SANDBOXED!) internet experience, I use Chrome.

And to be completely fair... If you don't explicitly download and run the malware, you are safe. It feels naked, but you really are.

To feel a little bit better dressed, a good antivirus is important too. I definitely advise Avast 7 Free for that. Reasonably light weight, excellent detection without (too many) false positives. Version 7 comes with remote desktop support for friends and its own sandbox system. Which kinda annoys after a while, for everything I seem to download is 'rare' and therefore suspicious ;p

And to really top it off... Whenever you logon, start a cleanup of all your temporary files. This will not interfere with your programs and has a high chance to remove waiting virii (which mostly hide between your temp files).
I advise Cleanup! by Steven Gould. It has a command line option which you can use with a simple batch file. Schedule this batch with Task Manager. Minimizing this dos box can be done with these instructions: http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/running-bat-files-minimized-scheduler-t2125918.html . Advantages of Cleanup! above all others?
1. it scans all user accounts, not just yours...
2. it has scan drive for files matching ... It is safe, yet complete.
3. it cleans even fresh temp files (Microsoft Disk Cleanup, by default, doesn't)
4. when you clean with the GUI it makes an AWESOME sound ; pp

Peace!

Devvie

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All spelling mistakes are my own and may only be distributed under the GNU General Public License! – (© 95-1 by Coredump; 2-012 by DevNullius)

so is the general feedback that Defender is not very good?

The BIG truble with Windows Defender is that every Virus, spyware and/or malware maker is doing every thing so Microsoft one product is the first that is not working agains it. This is a prerequest for them to spred. Windows Defender is just to keep the lamers from making simple malware.

I think you rather mean Anti-Spyware. From the word itself, anti-spyware are against spywares while antivirus are against viruses. Windows Defender is anti-spyware/anti-malware app.