Is it safe to add visual studio to an exclusion in Windows Defender

Question

_{Friday, March 18, 2016 9:40 AM}

Hi, Is it safe to add visual studio to an exclusion in Windows Defender?

My hard drive activity is always at 100% when i start visual studio (2015 community) and it is very annoying to wait defender to scan all files. Can somebody tell me if it is safe and if it is safe what folders i should add to exclusion.

All replies (2)

_{Friday, March 18, 2016 11:00 AM ✅Answered | 1 vote}

Hi,

As far as I know it will be okay if you are certain that there no virus in that folder. Or you could also do the following. Hope this helps you.

1. Open Task Manager during debugging.
2. Click on Details tab.
3. Make a list of Visual Studio processes (including debugging, user interface, etc. processes) and there directories.
   (To see directory of a process you can right click on process --> Open file location.)
4. After making that list, open Windows Defender.
5. Click on Settings tab.
6. Click on Excluded processes.
7. Click Browse and one-by-one add each and every process in your list by navigating to its directory.
8. Click on Save Changes.
9. You may restart your PC after this step.
10. Again open Visual Studio 2012 and try debugging and let me know if it helped or not.

Also you can read this article for more info.

Recommended anti-virus exclusions for Visual Studio

Thanks,

Sabah Shariq

_{Friday, March 18, 2016 9:16 PM}

Thanks! Now is a lot faster, i can now continue my mva.microsoft.com courses.