It appears there is a major bug in Windows Defender, the free antivirus software that ships with Windows 10.
If you try to run a quick or full scan, after a few seconds the application will stop, and scan only a few files. So the results it displays are not reliable. Such scans are known to take a long time to complete.
The issue has been reported a lot recently on Microsoft's technical support forums [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], as well as on Reddit [1, 2, 3, 4].
The bug appears to have been present since Windows Defender version 4.18.1908.7, which was released earlier this week. The bug appeared when Microsoft tried to fix another bug that appeared with the July 2019 Update.
According to reports, the initial bug “broke” the “sfc /scannow” command, which allows Windows users to scan the system for corrupted files.
After July's Patch Tuesday, this utility began flagging certain internal Windows Defender features as broken, resulting in misleading messages that led many users to believe there was a problem with their Windows Defender installation and updates.
Microsoft released a fix for this particular bug last week, but it doesn't seem to have had the expected results.
This issue doesn't seem to affect Windows Defender only on Windows 10, but all other versions of Windows that run Windows Defender. The same bug has also been reported for Security Essentials, the predecessor to Windows Defender, on older versions of Windows.
_________________
- 15,000 security cameras vulnerable to hacking attacks. Do you own one of them?
- The 'Panda' group makes millions of dollars through RATs and cryptominers
- Fairphone 3: The most environmentally friendly mobile phone you will find!
- Trend Micro highlights security risks of Open Banking
- PCLinuxOS 2019.09 for Windows fans
