Dear Dosfreak,
Cheers, you are such a star, I can't thank you enough. I really am so gratetful for this nugget - Windows Defender is now up & running perfectly on my W2K machine.
I was so pissed when I turned on my machine on the 2nd of this year... I could see no need why they should artifically lock me out of using a much needed product. It's their shitty web browser that has such a lack of security that makes such a program so necessary... don't punish us, the end user, ffs?!
I hope that this new install isn't time limited, like the others all were, I don't wanna go through all this again.
PS I think the MS AntiSpyware was quite a better program on a number of fronts, at least it didn't remove my Kazza installation without asking, like Defender did?!
PPS just to let you know I came across this thread via a check on Wikipedia - thanks again