Local Security Authority protection is on but Windows thinks it's off - or vice versa

I'm setting up an new PC that came with Win11 Home already installed. I noticed a yellow triangle with exclamation mark in the Windows Security system tray icon, and when I click on that, what it shows me is contradictary. See screen shot below from the settings app - it has a warning that Local Security Authority protection is off, but below it the on/off toggle shows that it is on.

This is a known bug in Windows 11, especially on newer installs or builds like 24H2. The contradiction between the warning and the toggle being set to “On” for Local Security Authority (LSA) protection has been reported by many users. (Maybe Brink knows more?)

Windows Security may incorrectly report that LSA protection is off—even when it’s actually enabled. This happens because the system UI doesn’t properly detect the registry settings or the protected process status of LSASS. Microsoft is aware of the issue, and future updates may resolve the UI inconsistency​

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You can confirm whether LSA protection is active by checking the Event Viewer:

• Open Event Viewer (`eventvwr.msc`)
• Navigate to Windows Logs > System
• Look for an event from WinInit with the message:
“LSASS.exe was started as a protected process with level: 4”

One mentiond fix:

If you want to try clearing the warning, you can manually set the registry keys:

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa" -Name "RunAsPPL" -Value 1 -Type DWord
Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa" -Name "RunAsPPLBoot" -Value 1 -Type DWord

Then reboot. This won’t always remove the warning, but it ensures LSA is configured properly.

Personally; I’d just confirm it’s working and leave it until Microsoft fixes it in an update.

Thanks. What I did was click the toggle, to turn it off, answered the UAC dialog, then clicked the toggle again, to turn it back on, which wanted a reboot. After rebooting the problem was gone.

That's cool. Easy as

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