There seems to be a major bug in Windows Defender, the free antivirus software released with Windows 10.
If you try to run a fast or a full scan after a few seconds the application will stop, scanning a few files. So the results it will display are unreliable. Such scans are known to take a long time to complete.
This issue has been reported recently in Microsoft technical support forums [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], but also on Reddit [1, 2, 3, 4].
The bug appears to be present since Windows Defender version 4.18.1908.7, which was released earlier this weekteam. The bug was introduced when Microsoft tried to fix another bug that was introduced in July 2019.
According to reports, the original bug “broke” the “sfc /scannow” command, which allows Windows users to scan the system for corrupted files.
After July's Patch Tuesday, this utility program began to flag certain internal features of Windows Defender as broken, causing false messages to mislead users. So many believed that there was one problem by installing Windows Defender and its updates.
Microsoft released a bug fix for this bug last week, but apparently did not have the expected results.
This particular issue does not seem to affect Windows Defender only in Windows 10, but also all other versions of Windows running Windows Defender. The same error has been reported for the Security Essentials, the precursor to Windows Defender in older versions of Windows.
_________________
- 15,000 security cameras vulnerable to hacking attacks. Do you have one of these?
- The Panda Group makes millions of dollars through RATs and cryptominers
- Fairphone 3: The most environmentally friendly mobile you will find!
- Trend Micro highlights the security risks of Open Banking
- PCLinuxOS 2019.09 for Windows friends
