How to Whitelist Salad in Windows Defender

1. Uninstall Salad

Uninstall Salad and all of its associated files and folders

2. Restart your computer

This will finalize the uninstallation of Salad, as it does with most programs that require drivers to run.

3. Reinstall Salad

Navigate in your internet browser to www.salad.io and re-download the installation .exe, and when the installation finishes, be sure to uncheck the “Run Salad” checkbox.

4. Open Windows Defender

To find the Windows Defender settings, click on the little search icon beside your Windows Icon and a search bar will appear. On that search bar, type ‘Windows Defender’ and select ‘Windows Defender Settings’

5. Open Windows Defender Settings

After opening Windows defender settings, you will be greeted with the main screen of Windows Defender containing many settings. From there, click on the ‘Virus and Threat Protection’ setting as pictured below-

6. Click on 'Virus and Threat Protection' Setting

After you have clicked ‘Virus and Threat protection’ setting on the main screen, another window will appear. That window will show you settings related to virus and threat protection your computer. From there, select ‘Manage settings’ right under ‘Virus and Threat protections settings;

7. Adding Exclusions

After you have clicked on ‘Manage settings’, you will be shown the settings of real time protection and other related things. You would not see the ‘Exclusion’ setting at first. You will have to scroll down a little to find it. It is right under ‘Controlled Folder Access’.

8. Click on 'Add or remove exclusions'

After you have found the exclusion setting, click on ‘Add or remove exclusion’ right under it.

9. Click on 'Add and Exclusion'

After clicking ‘Add or remove exclusion’, you will be greeted by another window. In that window, click the ‘Add an exception’ button and select ‘Folder’ from the drop down list.

10. Adding Salad as an Exclusion

After clicking on ‘Add an exception’ and selecting the ‘Folder’ option. You will need to navigate Salad’s installation folder. The default installation path is “C:\Users\YourUserHere\appdata\roaming\salad” (without the quotations) and click on ‘Select Folder’

11. Click 'Select Folder'

 Once you’ve found your Salad installation folder and clicked it, hit ‘Select Folder’, and it will bring you back to the main Windows Defender ‘Exclusion’ page with your newly added Exclusion.

12. Run Salad

Let Salad run for at least 30 minutes after setting up the whitelist. Contact support if this issue persists.