MCP Installation Issues - Cannot Use it

[teleportpast]

Hello,

I installed MCP Server for Harden System Security via the Microsoft Store but am facing one issues with Harden System Security:

• I cannot successfully integrate or use MCP within Harden-Windows-Security.

The documentation (https://github.com/HotCakeX/Harden-Windows-Security/wiki/Harden-System-Security#mcp-server) presents it references using VS Code while also stating that MCP is native to the solution itself.

Could you please provide clear instructions on how to best utilize MCP within the context of the Harden System Security app?

Thanks!

[HotCakeX]

Hi,
It's the MCP server is an app like others. It can be uninstalled like other apps, right-clicking on start menu icon and selecting uninstall, or from the Windows settings -> Apps.

To use it, just have to install it and also the Harden System Security app itself. After that, in a program that accepts MCP servers, use HSSMCP.exe for the stdio command, then if you ask your AI in agentic mode (not normal chat mode) to use the features offered by the MCP server, it will ask you if you want to use the Harden System Security MCP to do them or not.

If for some reason you can't uninstall it, i will need more details, messages, errors etc. to be able to help

[teleportpast]

Thank you for your quick reply.

My original post incorrectly stated that I couldn’t uninstall the MCP server. In fact, I’ve been able to uninstall and reinstall it without any problems. I’ve updated the body of the issue accordingly, but I realized I forgot to adjust the title (now it’s been corrected).

After digging a bit further, I discovered how to run the MCP server from LM Studio by pointing LM Studio to HSSMCP.exe. That part is sorted now as well.

When I asked for my security score, the response was:

Which hardening level would you like me to check for—basic, recommended, or complete? Once I know, I’ll pull up the current compliance score.

It appears that the scoring routine is based on one of the predefined presets (basic, recommended, or complete), whereas my configuration is custom. I tried instructing it to use the basic preset for a comparison, but it returned:

I’m sorry—I couldn’t retrieve the score right now because the function call timed out.

[HotCakeX]

Can you successfully use the Verify feature on the Basic preset in the Protect page in app?

[teleportpast]

Yes it works. I used the Verify feature on the Basic preset in the Protect page. After waiting a little bit for it to finish up, it showed me "Successfully verified 7 categories."

[teleportpast]

The MCP server feature isn’t essential for me either. It’s just something I was tinkering with.

[HotCakeX]

Hi @teleportpast

Appreciate you reporting this. After digging in i found the root cause of this. The Exploit Mitigations I applied to the app were too restrictive (too secure) and they were preventing the MCP server to call the app to perform high privilege tasks, but the GUI was working fine. So i aligned them and will release a new update on Monday that will include the change. All you will have to do is to apply the Microsoft Defender category again.

Microsoft recently made a new article about deprecation of certain Exploit Mitigation. This alignment follows that article's recommendations: https://learn.microsoft.com/defender-endpoint/evaluate-exploit-protection

Here are some screenshots after i made the changes

By the way, this is not even close to the final state of the MCP Server. A lot of more features and capabilities will be added to it in the future.

[HotCakeX]

The update is available now: https://github.com/HotCakeX/Harden-Windows-Security/releases/tag/HardenSystemSecurity-v1.0.93.0

Please apply the Microsoft Defender category again to use the MCP Server

[teleportpast]

I’m afraid it still isn’t working.

A few of the “Microsoft Defender” rules remain enabled and don’t get turned off. Maybe because of Group‑Policy settings I had already applied.

In fact, I can no longer access GPO on my secondary Windows account (which I use as the main user) for some time now, so I’m not entirely sure what’s blocking it.

I haven’t seen any logs generated by the MCP server, so it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what’s preventing it from running.

[HotCakeX]

Well the update doesn't remove all exploit mitigations, it only adjusts them, but it doesn't use policy, it uses direct API calls. Policies can interfere with it and override it. The app never uses policies to apply mitigations. It also doesn't do anything to cause Group Policy Editor to fail to open. If you've used other tools or applied other policies, you can undo and remove them all via the Group Policy Editor page in the app.