Spartan

I did try and disable Defender and install AVG on my new Win 10 machine that wouldn't run CM2, but that didn't help.  (It's always possible that a key step was missed - when something goes wrong it can become very complex to troubleshoot.)  All CM2 games run fine on my 3 year old Win 10 machine.  So I suspect something in the newest iteration of the OS.  This assumes that the NSA or Chinese Intelligence (since I think most of the system was made in China) haven't hacked my new machine so I cannot use it for CM2 - always a possibility I suppose.

The listing of CMBN in the Apps with a 'red X' through it simply indicates that it is an uninstaller and is completely normal.
I'm not completely sure you can fully disable Microsoft Defender. If you have nothing else installed to replace it, then it might still be running (despite attempts to disable it). Supposedly stopping the 'Windows Defender Antivirus Service' and stopping the 'Antimalware Service Executable' as mentioned in in this article would do the job, but I'm uncertain. What makes this confusing is that it seems some people have no problems with Microsoft Defender, while others do.