defender.exe task purpose and description:

Defender.exe is an executable program file. Always check the file location which is shown below, as this is a way to verify you have the correct file. Often spyware or virus writers use similiar names in hopes to fool you into thinking its a good file, but they place the spyware in other disk locations with the similiar or same name. This Defender.exe file is a virus and rogue antispyware program. It can get on your pc through rogue websites, and it will close your tasklist if you open it. I would remove this immediately if it was on my computer. To manually remove this defender.exe virus, power off the computer and boot into safe mode, then go to the folder locations below and delete the file. Then reboot and it will be back to normal. As one file safety check to help ease your mind, download the free Microsoft safety scanner here http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx and run a full scan. This is good to do occasionally anyways as its free and will help keep your machine clean. (See the details below for the actual location of this file.)

Actual process or task name: (You can view alphabetical task list here)
defender.exe

File type:
This is an executable program.

Where is this file and folder located on my computer?
This program should be searched for but also can be found at C:\Program Files\SpySpotter3\Defender.exe -startup On later windows systems it will be found at c:\users\owner\appdata\roaming\defender.exe

General information:
Be aware that many tasks will be similiar names to existing tasks or processes. You can always view the running tasks on your computer by pressing ctrl-alt-del to view the windows "task manager", and then view the "processes" tab. This will show you all tasks running or currently active on your PC. Although this shows you all running tasks, it does not show dll file thats are loaded, as they get loaded as part of other processes. Many spyware writers attempt to hide their files on your computer, for example, defender.exe may be intentionally misspelled to look like a similiar task, or spyware may be named very similiar to a Windows system task. The reason they do this is so you cannot easily recognize the name in your tasklist as I have mentioned above. Make sure always check the location of the file if you are concerned. You can always find the location of defender.exe on your computer by using your Windows search options, but I will also try to list the file location of every file described on this website, so you can verify the correct location. You can view the entire tasklist directory with the link below.

View entire task list here!