Windows 10 Do other people see this happen...

MikeHawthorne

Essential Member
Microsoft Community Contributor
Hi

Often when I boot my computer I get a notice that says "Windows Defender needs to scan your system" in the Action Center.

When I click on the message, sometimes it takes me to the Windows Defender Window, where it says that everything is up to date my computer is clean and no action needs to be taken (sometimes it just takes me to a general Windows management window with no sign of Defender in site.

I've never yet gone there and had it say, to run a scan, I do it sometimes anyway but it never wants me to do that.

In addition, I always check the History tab.
In years it has never said that it found and quarantined anything?

If it's really doing something wouldn't it have found something in all this time?

Today I had the same thing, I went to the Defender window and clicked on the Update tab, when I clicked Update Definitions it suddenly said that Defender was shut off and told me to restart it, and everything turned red.

It wouldn't restart, but once I went to Windows Update and ran update from there is all went back to normal.

I haven't run a third party Antivirus for many years, other then Malwarebytes, and an occasional scan with SuperAntiSpyware, but I've never had any malware problems.

But it really makes me wonder what defender is really doing. LOL

Mike
 
It may just be notifying you a scan is over due. WD generally starts scanning automatically
 
Hi

How about the History Tab, do you ever see any entries in it?
It seems like it should show something sometime.

Mike
 
Scans will show up in Event Viewer > Applications and Services Logs > Microsoft > Windows > Windows Defender
"Scan Started" is Event ID 1000
 
I'll check that out, and see if it's really doing it, I know it's set to scan when the computer isn't busy.
But I do turn it off at night, so I don't know if it does it or not for sure.
 
it only takes about 5 mins to do a defender scan on average systems
 
Back
Top