For the past two weeks, Windows 10 users have been reporting issues with Windows Defender . According to the complaints, some of the files are being skipped during scanning. It's as if they've been placed in the " Exceptions " so that they don't get scanned.
However, users reporting this issue say that they have not configured Windows Defender to not scan these specific files.
Users report that when they perform a "quick scan" or a "full scan" using Windows Defender, a notification appears saying that some items were skipped during the scan:
"Some data was skipped during the scan"
Windows Defender Antivirus scan skipped an item due to exclusion settings or network scanning ."
The first to report the problem was German author Günter Born. Born said that 80% of his German readers confirm this behavior of Windows Defender, while 20% do not receive the above notification.
Further testing confirmed the error.
It's unclear when the issue started, but according to various reports, it's been happening since around March 10, 2020, which ties it to the Patch Tuesday .
The strange thing is that this issue was reported in different Antimalware Client and does not affect everyone running the same engine version.
To make sure that no hidden exceptions or other settings for Windows Defender, use the following command.
Get-MpPreference | findstr /i “net exc”
If there is no setting that excludes items from scanning, it means that you are also experiencing the same error.
This is a strange bug, as there doesn't seem to be a common denominator among the affected users.
Microsoft yet commented on this specific problem.
