Disabling WFP and SFP

When Microsoft releases a new software version, service pack, or hotfix, the company updates the security catalogs and protected file listings to reflect the new file versions. Outside these methods, the only way to modify or delete a protected system file is to disable Windows File Protection (WFP) or System File Protection (SFP), which isn’t easy to do. For the most part, I don’t recommend disabling WFP or SFP. However, some users, mostly gamers, like to disable WFP and SFP because they want to squeeze out their machines’ best performance by reclaiming the used CPU cycles. Other people want to reclaim the disk space taken up by the file cache and unneeded or potentially dangerous system files. Indeed, many security experts, including me, recommend deleting unnecessary and potentially dangerous system files (e.g., wscript.exe), which can be difficult to do on a system that has WFP or SFP enabled. If you’re certain you want to permanently disable WFP or SFP, an Internet search will reveal resources that tell you how to do so. You should always first try disabling WFP or SFP on a test system before doing so on your production system.