Frequently asked questions - Microsoft Defender Application Guard

We recommend 8-GB RAM for optimal performance but you can use the following registry DWORD values to enable Application Guard on machines that aren't meeting the recommended hardware configuration.

HKLM\software\Microsoft\Hvsi\SpecRequiredProcessorCount (Default is four cores.)

HKLM\software\Microsoft\Hvsi\SpecRequiredMemoryInGB (Default is 8 GB.)

HKLM\software\Microsoft\Hvsi\SpecRequiredFreeDiskSpaceInGB (Default is 5 GB.)

The manual or PAC server must be a hostname (not IP) that is neutral on the site-list. Additionally, if the PAC script returns a proxy, it must meet those same requirements.

To ensure the FQDNs (Fully Qualified Domain Names) for the “PAC file” and the “proxy servers the PAC file redirects to” are added as Neutral Resources in the Network Isolation policies used by Application Guard, you can:

• Verify this addition by going to edge://application-guard-internals/#utilities and entering the FQDN for the pac/proxy in the “check url trust” field and verifying that it says “Neutral.”
• It must be an FQDN. A simple IP address won't work.
• Optionally, if possible, the IP addresses associated with the server hosting the above should be removed from the Enterprise IP Ranges in the Network Isolation policies used by Application Guard.

Application Guard requires proxies to have a symbolic name, not just an IP address. IP-Literal proxy settings such as 192.168.1.4:81 can be annotated as itproxy:81 or using a record such as P19216810010 for a proxy with an IP address of 192.168.100.10. This annotation applies to Windows 10 Enterprise edition, version 1709 or higher. These annotations would be for the proxy policies under Network Isolation in Group Policy or Intune.

The following Input Method Editors (IME) introduced in Windows 10, version 1903 are currently not supported in Microsoft Defender Application Guard:

• Vietnam Telex keyboard
• Vietnam number key-based keyboard
• Hindi phonetic keyboard
• Bangla phonetic keyboard
• Marathi phonetic keyboard
• Telugu phonetic keyboard
• Tamil phonetic keyboard
• Kannada phonetic keyboard
• Malayalam phonetic keyboard
• Gujarati phonetic keyboard
• Odia phonetic keyboard
• Punjabi phonetic keyboard

This feature is currently experimental only and isn't functional without an extra registry key provided by Microsoft. If you would like to evaluate this feature on a deployment of Windows 10 Enterprise, version 1803, contact Microsoft and we’ll work with you to enable the feature.

WDAGUtilityAccount is part of Application Guard, beginning with Windows 10, version 1709 (Fall Creators Update). It remains disabled by default, unless Application Guard is enabled on your device. WDAGUtilityAccount is used to sign in to the Application Guard container as a standard user with a random password. It's NOT a malicious account. It requires Logon as a service permissions to be able to function correctly. If this permission is denied, you might see the following error:

Error: 0x80070569, Ext error: 0x00000001; RDP: Error: 0x00000000, Ext error: 0x00000000 Location: 0x00000000

To trust a subdomain, you must precede your domain with two dots (..). For example: ..contoso.com ensures that mail.contoso.com or news.contoso.com are trusted. The first dot represents the strings for the subdomain name (mail or news), and the second dot recognizes the start of the domain name (contoso.com). These two dots prevent sites such as fakesitecontoso.com from being trusted.

When using Windows Pro or Windows Enterprise, you have access to using Application Guard in Standalone Mode. However, when using Enterprise you have access to Application Guard in Enterprise-Managed Mode. This mode has some extra features that the Standalone Mode doesn't. For more information, see Prepare to install Microsoft Defender Application Guard.

Yes, both the Enterprise Resource domains that are hosted in the cloud and the domains that are categorized as both work and personal have a 1,6383-byte limit.

Microsoft Defender Application Guard accesses files from a VHD mounted on the host that needs to be written during setup. If an encryption driver prevents a VHD from being mounted or from being written to, Application Guard doesn't work and results in an error message (0x80070013 ERROR_WRITE_PROTECT).

There's not a one-to-one mapping among all the Network Isolation policies between CSP and GP. Mandatory network isolation policies to deploy Application Guard are different between CSP and GP.

• Mandatory network isolation GP policy to deploy Application Guard: DomainSubnets or CloudResources

• Mandatory network isolation CSP policy to deploy Application Guard: EnterpriseCloudResources or (EnterpriseIpRange and EnterpriseNetworkDomainNames)

• For EnterpriseNetworkDomainNames, there's no mapped CSP policy.

Application Guard accesses files from a VHD mounted on the host that needs to be written during setup. If an encryption driver prevents a VHD from being mounted or from being written to, Application Guard doesn't work and results in an error message (0x80070013 ERROR_WRITE_PROTECT).

If hyperthreading is disabled (because of an update applied through a KB article or through BIOS settings), there's a possibility Application Guard no longer meets the minimum requirements.

Application Guard might not work correctly on NTFS compressed volumes. If this issue persists, try uncompressing the volume.

This issue is a known one. To mitigate this issue, you need to create two firewall rules. For information about creating a firewall rule with Group Policy, see Configure Windows Firewall rules with group policy

First rule (DHCP Server)

• Program path: %SystemRoot%\System32\svchost.exe

• Local Service: Sid: S-1-5-80-2009329905-444645132-2728249442-922493431-93864177 (Internet Connection Service (SharedAccess))

• Protocol UDP

• Port 67

Second rule (DHCP Client)

This rule is the same as the first rule, but scoped to local port 68. In the Microsoft Defender Firewall user interface go through the following steps:

1. Right-click on inbound rules, and then create a new rule.

2. Choose custom rule.

3. Specify the following program path: %SystemRoot%\System32\svchost.exe.

4. Specify the following settings:

   • Protocol Type: UDP
   • Specific ports: 67
   • Remote port: any

5. Specify any IP addresses.

6. Allow the connection.

7. Specify to use all profiles.

8. The new rule should show up in the user interface. Right click on the rule > properties.

9. In the Programs and services tab, under the Services section, select settings.

10. Choose Apply to this Service and select Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) Shared Access.

ICS is enabled by default in Windows, and ICS must be enabled in order for Application Guard to function correctly. We don't recommend disabling ICS; however, you can disable ICS in part by using a Group Policy and editing registry keys.

1. In the Group Policy setting, Prohibit use of Internet Connection Sharing on your DNS domain network, set it to Disabled.

2. Disable IpNat.sys from ICS load as follows:
   System\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\DisableIpNat = 1

3. Configure ICS (SharedAccess) to be enabled as follows:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Start = 3

4. (This step is optional) Disable IPNAT as follows:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\IPNat\Start = 4

5. Reboot the device.

Allow-listed items must be configured as "allowed" in the Group Policy Object to ensure AppGuard works properly.

Policy: Allow installation of devices that match any of the following device IDs:

• SCSI\DiskMsft____Virtual_Disk____
• {8e7bd593-6e6c-4c52-86a6-77175494dd8e}\msvhdhba
• VMS_VSF
• root\Vpcivsp
• root\VMBus
• vms_mp
• VMS_VSP
• ROOT\VKRNLINTVSP
• ROOT\VID
• root\storvsp
• vms_vsmp
• VMS_PP

Policy: Allow installation of devices using drivers that match these device setup classes

• {71a27cdd-812a-11d0-bec7-08002be2092f}

WinNAT drops ICMP/UDP messages with packets greater than MTU when using Default Switch or Docker NAT network. Support for this solution has been added in KB4571744. To fix the issue, install the update and enable the fix by following these steps:

1. Ensure that the FragmentAware DWORD is set to 1 in this registry setting: \Registry\Machine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Winnat.

2. Reboot the device.

This policy was present in Windows 10 prior to version 2004. It was removed from later versions of Windows as it doesn't enforce anything for either Microsoft Edge or Office.

• Visit Create a new support request.
• Under the Product Family, select Windows. Select the product and the product version you need help with. For the category that best describes the issue, select, Windows Security Technologies. In the final option, select Windows Defender Application Guard.

Yes. Use this Microsoft Edge flag to enable or disable this behavior: --disable-features="msWdagAutoCloseNavigatedTabs"

See also

Configure Microsoft Defender Application Guard policy settings