There seems to be a significant error in Windows Defender, the free antivirus software that comes with Windows 10.
If you try to run a quick scan or a full scan after a few seconds the application it will stop, and scan minimal files. So the results it will display are not reliable. Such scans are known to take quite some 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 error appears to be from the version of Windows Defender 4.18.1908.7, released earlier this week. The error occurred when Microsoft attempted to correct another error that occurred with 2019 in July.
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 people believed that there was a problem with the installation of 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.
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