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So I have been hearing about this problem recently quite a few times. I have been dying to get my hands on this issue that has eluded so many other computer technicians. It looks like a technician that goes by Dannim resolved the issue on the foolishtech.com forums. He made a post yesterday that said:

Hey guys, I believe I’ve found the problem. It appears (on the latest system that I’ve seen this) that all the Windows Defender files have been replaced with shortcuts/symlinks to System32\config. I ended up copying the “Windows Defender” folder from another Vista x86 and pasting it in. Afterwards I was able to turn Windows Defender on and downloads were going through.

One problem though is that the “en-US” folder shortcut (symlinkd) could not be removed. “rmdir” should work, but all I got was “This directory is not empty”. “del” would work, but because of the symlinkd it would delete System32\config files, which might come under the heading of A BAD THING TO DO . I renamed that folder and pasted in the proper “en-US” without issue.

Now as I understand it this issue can be caused by other antivirus products as well such as AVG but if you’ve already cleaned that up and you still can’t resolve it then time to look into the Windows Defender folder like Dannim stated.