Speeding up WSL I/O up to 5x faster

I have a shortcut on my desktop that toggles Real Time Protection:

Create a file `toggle-defender-real-time-protection.ps1` in a known location with the following content:

  $preferences = Get-MpPreference
  Set-MpPreference -DisableRealtimeMonitoring (!$preferences.DisableRealtimeMonitoring)

Then create a shortcut for this target:

  %SystemRoot%\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File "toggle-defender-real-time-protection.ps1"

Make it run as Administrator.

(Source of this nice script: https://superuser.com/a/1287788/25933)

Note that Windows somehow turns the protection on after a random amount of time.

Antivirus is not very useful. A little common sense goes a lot farther. Whenever I use windows, I disable the AV entirely.

Thanks for these tips. Real-time protection seems to be responsible for my laptop pegging itself at 100% CPU for a few minutes every time I wake it up from sleep, I will see if this changes anything.

This also helps Visual Studio.

I'd definitely just add exclusions though, rather than disabling it entirely.

Also add any processes you frequently use to the exclusion (like python3.5 for ranger).

But why don't we deserve both speed and security, at the same time?

TL;DR: disable win defender.

Anyways, this is the first thing I do on a dev machine. Usually I remove any A/V completely, not just disable it. Because top of the line core-i7 machine with all "security" features enabled works no faster than venerable 486dx.