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This all started when I was playing Overwatch 2 normally one weekend when all of a sudden, my PSU started to act up which led to my PC Crashing and going on Boot Loop. So long story short it corrupted my Motherboard and RAM, so I bought another PSU, Motherboard, and RAM. Still retained most of my parts from my PC fortunately and I did a test for my CPU with OCC and Intel, MSI Afterburner for my GPU and other 3rd party app for benchmarking GPU, as well as checking the diskhealth of my drives and it all passed. But after that when I reinstalled all my games and drivers my PC keeps freezing or crashing when playing games which are multiplayer extensive and have anticheat system included. I also noticed that my Windows Defender was not working as intended amidst all the errors and I believe that it is correlated. That being said here are the solutions I have tried to fix the problem but to no avail: - SFC /Scannow - DISM Commands (Scanhealth, Checkhealth, RestoreHealth) - Removing and Updating Windows Defender Signatures both via CMD and PowerShell - Powershell Command: Get-AppxPackage *Microsoft.Windows.SecHealthUI* | Reset-AppxPackage - Cleaning up the OS Directory via Disk Cleanup - tried Ren:SoftwareDistribution and Catroot2 commands as well but didn't work. - Made a DisableAntiSpyware in Registry Edit, also turned it to '0'. - did a repair/upgrade install. - did a clean install. - tried installing using an older version of Windows 10 (Not 22H2) - tried installing Windows 11 - tried installing OS on a MBR Disk - tried installing OS on a GPT Disk - tried downloading and updating my Windows Defender Manually but it doesn't seem to Run the installation. After several attempts it came to me that this might be a cause of not owning a legitimate license of Windows 10 but even after purchasing a legit license key the problem still persisted. I will attach my MSInfo and DxDiag as well as the other errors that I encountered with this problem. These are are the games that I am playing to give you more information and insight with the issue: Games that Run fine: Resident Evil 2, 3, 4 (All Remake), Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, Age of Darkness, Civ 6, Ready or Not, Command and Conquer Red Alert 3, Tribes of Midgard. Games that Freeze and Crash: Naraka: Bladepoint, Fortnite, Overwatch 2, Warhammer: Vermintide 2 (I haven't tried all games with AntiCheat but highly likely all of them can lead to crashing or freezing) Apologies for the long post. Any help regarding this issue will be highly appreciated. DxDiag.txt MSInfo.txt

I've always wondered if having a third party anti virus software is better than just going on with the built in windows defender. I think being considerate with your browsing on the internet and with windows defender as your AV is plenty. With that being said, do you guys think that third party AVs are better security than windows defender? or if they can be better than windows defender in the use case of new/inexperienced users?

I downloaded LfsLazy from the LFS forum, I think the download has gotten infected. Windows defender removed it, I did a full scan, it found it in the browser's cache, I removed it, then cleared the browser cache. Then checked the browser folder again, it didn't find it, but, this notif stayed, the details say that it's on my desktop, in the zip file it removed. Is there a way to remove the notification?

Hi, in one of our computers the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Scans folder consists of a bunch of mpcache files that add upto around 10gb. I would like to delete them as it is consuming too much space. Tried deleting them manually but I get the error saying Windows Defender Service is using this file and it cannot be deleted. I noticed that even if I turn off Windows Defender from settings, it doesn't allow the files to be deleted. Also noticed that the Defender service cannot be stopped in the services Window as the options are greyed out. Some insight to get this done would be really helpful. Thanks.

Hi all, I built the computer about 2 weeks ago but the error started about 12 hours ago. Just as the topic says, Windows Security is saying that a threat was found and action was taken, but nothing is showing up in Protection History. I checked the Event Viewer to see if any viruses or malware was found and sure enough, nothing. I've also done a few follow up quick scans and found nothing. Some googling points to it being a bug with windows defender and I've done the following solutions suggested by others but nothing has worked so far: Turn on Controlled Folder Access No effect. Uninstall Intel Driver & Support Assistant I don't have this program. The only Intel devices I have are a Bluetooth and Wifi adapter that came with my B550 Gaming Carbon Wifi mobo. Uninstall Intel Computing Improvement Program Don't have this program either. I tried reinstalling the aforementioned Intel drivers but that didn't seem to help either. I'm running an AMD 5800x. Is it possible AMD has a Intel equivalent to these programs that's causing this issue? Any other suggestions are welcome. Thanks! Edit: Not sure if this'll help or not, but the last thing I installed before this appeared was VMware Workstation 16 Player and created 3 virtual machines for linux (Ubuntu 64-bit, Pop!_OS and BunsenLab's Lithium).

Hello, I recently decided to move many of my old files from my laptop to my recently build desktop which has a lot more storage capacity. I transferred pretty much all of my files to two separate flash drives to facilitate the transfer. After that was done I decided that it would be a good idea to run a windows defender security scan on each of the drives prior to transferring the files to my desktop. This turned out to be an excellent plan as it flagged a document on one of the drives which was an html document labeled how to recover your files. I noticed that all of the other files in the folder had the file extension .vvv so I assumed that this was a ransomware attack and just deleted all of the files in the folder. I also checked for hidden files but did not find any. Sadly I did not look for the date stamp on those files so I am unsure of when this may have happened although I guess that isn't super useful information. Either way, I rescanned the drives again with windows defender and found nothing. Then I completely cleaned my main drive and reinstalled windows which I was planning on doing anyways. Figuring that as a newly blank laptop I could freely test the drives again knowing that I wouldn't loose anything just in case something unexpected happened. I once again scanned with windows defender (full scan, offline scan, and custom scans of the flash drives). I also noticed that McAfee live protect was installed by default when I reset the computer. I have once again done a full scan and individual scans of the drives using McAfee this time and nothing has shown up. What concerns me is that I never found any sort of program that would have been responsible for encrypting my files in the first place. I am always as safe as possible online so I don't have any ideas where it may have come from but the fact that I didn't see any evidence of it concerns me although I did wipe the laptop so that should help. While I would normally just give up on the contents of the drives, there is about 100 GB worth of really important data on those drives that I'd prefer not to lose. What I am wondering is whether or not I have done enough to consider that these drives safe to plug into my desktop so that I can pull the files off. If there is more that I can do I am all ears. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. -Alec

I recently uninstalled Avira Antivirus, restarted my laptop and then windows security notified me that Windows Defender and Avira are disabled. I went to Windows security to enable Windows defender but Windows threat a nd security tab was missing. I googled to find a solution for this. Everyone mentioned to change the group policy under administrative templates so I headed over there. And I couldn't find that too . I don't know if I have changed any policies. The laptop I use my own and does not belong to any organization or school. Do respond if you guys have a fix

Now for various reasons I had to reinstall Windows 10 on my computer. I am going to publicly state I hate how difficult it is to schedule scans with this OS, but I digress. I try to do the defender offline scan. I then get the blue screen saying "Your PC/Device needs to be repaired" A required device isn't connected or can't be repaired. I get error code 0x000000d. Now I will reboot after this and everything works find. I check device manager everything looks fine. Can someone point me in the right direction where to find (and hopefully fix) the problem?

Hello everyone, i have a couple of questions about Windows Defender and the way is supposed to work. So a month ago i built my first computer I installed some programs to check out performance, temperature idle and in game etc... and everything run smootly until now. A couple of days ago i experienced a slowdown while closing my system, so i decided to run a full scan and i found a threat, but Windows defender always showed in "Protection History": no current threads. Eventually i reset my pc (because i was afraid lol), and than reinstalled one by one the programs and games from the official sites. Like nothing, this afternoon windows defender tells me that there is a threat but it isn't showed in P.H. like the other one. How i am supposed to know what threat my computer found and where i should operate to solve the problem in this situation? Should i run an another reset? If the virus isn't showed in Protection History what does it means? What kind of thread act like this?

As you can see, windows defender isn't working as it should be. The windows defender antivirus service isn't in services.msc so I tried to start it using cmd, but it still won't budge. I don't know what to do. Any help is appreciated.

I'm still on Windows 10 and using Defender, but I wonder is it still good to use in 2022. I have been using it since windows 10 came out and I have never really had an issue with viruses Malware or Ransomware (To be clear though, I make sure to avoid janky websites). I'm also a developer and streamer/gamer so security is rather important, and I want to make sure I'm up to date on protection. So should I still keep using Windows defender, or find something else?

I used windows defender to do a scan of my whole machine. It found like 40 viruses which freaked me out a little. Howerver I realised it was a kali iso i had in my downloads folder that of course containes viruses. I deleted it and expected it to be clean now. Nex scan shows i have another virus or trojan. It was a minecraft mod that was falsely flagged as virus, so i deleted it and emptied the windows trash bin. In Theory I shouldn't have it on my PC anymore but it still shows up in defender. I think it's because I deleted it manually so the Defender can't remove it. Howver it still shows up as threat and im not sure what to do.

Hi all, I've been stumped on this for quite a bit. Whenever I restart my machine, core isolation on Windows Defender keeps turning itself off. Everything else stays on but not Core Isolation. I've done a modified registry key audit on the registry location "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceGuard\Scenarios\HypervisorEnforcedCodeIntegrity". But nothing there gets changed by anything according to the audit. I've also edited the registry keys and set the Locked one to 1 but after a restart both the enabled and the locked registry key get set to 0 again. Any Ideas? Machine Info: Windows 10 Pro, 22h2, OS Build: 19045.2364. 64Bit Ryzen 5 3600, 2x16GB Crucial RAM BIOS ver: 2806 (ASUS Prime A520M-K) 500W PSU,

So i was i had to install a software and required to turn off RTP in defender, i don't use any other antivirus, and now i cant seem to turn it back on, this would not happen during my previous software setups. Also i use Winearo Tweaker and O&O Shut Up Windows to change some unwanted stuff now i tried to turn on RTP through all ways possible like the Registry method and the Group Policy method , but failed, why i want it turned on is because i use it as some sort of namesake software protection, please help

So, I have two machines. My 7 year old Gaming PC, running windows 8.1, and a bottom of the barrel, nearly ewaste, super low-end laptop, which I purchased for two reasons: It was extremely cheap brand new, and it functioned as a mobile computer for logging, reflashing, and overall tuning a car using a USB to OBDII adapter (that adapter is a rant for another day! Hoooo boy...). I originally had a used Dell Optiplex with a core i5 2400 and a super old graphics card, however, that machine died recently due to PSU failure. The PSU replacement costs more than the machine cost me used, so I've recycled it (again). So, my crappy laptop got an automatic nomination for youtube/netflix/VRV duties (it's how I get my LTT and Tech Jesus fixes... And JayzWaterCoolingNonSense as well). I fail to understand the basic concepts behind the security, software update, and overall human to software processes that Microsoft has for Win 10. Automatic updates that have possibly bricked machines in the past, 'security' that is just not 'secure', and even just the ridiculous process to get to settings, it's just so frustrating. I recently upgraded my gaming machine from a Haswell i5 4440 to a Xeon E3 1280V3, and was having some issues getting all-core turbo and base clock to work how I wanted, and someone suggested I try ThrottleStop to change some settings... Since this program appears to be aimed at Laptop users, and I have a laptop, I figured I'd get it installed there as well, and maybe undervolt, tweak, etc., the laptop and get better battery out of it if the power fails, or whatever. So, I go to install it... And Windows Defender SmartScreen blocks it. No option to bypass on the blocked screen. Why? What is the point of this? I literally went on google and found instructions to disable smartscreen outright. Microsoft's security apparatus to 'protect' my laptop is now completely disabled, and I have zero intention of re-enabling it. I'm tempted to leave Windows Defender permanently disabled as well. So, what is the intention of this kind of 'security' coding? Is it to keep, uh... the 'Less Tech Savvy' people from installing 'lolthisnotavirus.exe', or what? Any time I see a prompt that says 'F*** You! You cannot install this ever!' pop up on my PC, I immediately go find a way to disable that. It completely defeats the purpose of the code in the first place. I guess I'm just entirely failing to see the purpose of this kind of code, except to aggravate me and waste my time. Plus, Windows 8.1 doesn't have this kind of garbageware on it, just regular old Windows Defender, which for the most part, I just leave alone. I've been considering upgrading (downgrading?) my gaming rig to Windows 10 Pro, as well as getting a newer laptop along with an upgrade for it to Win 10 Pro (I actually would be using the remote desktop features of the Pro version), but having used Win 10 for the last 3 years alongside Win 8.1, I really do prefer the ease of use, simpler, easier settings, and overall experience of Win 8.1 over Win 10. Finding a setting is fast and easy in Win 8.1, but takes me websearching to find in Win 10. My laptop is 'convertible', with a fold flat keyboard so it can be used as a tablet, and it does have a touch screen (yeah, when I said it was cheap, it's a $200 brand new convertible laptop/tablet, so it's super duper bottom of the barrel), and again, I really, really, REALLY did NOT like the tablet mode for Win 10. Having no reasonable way to get to your desktop to find something just because you put your machine in tablet mode just about got me to throw this thing out the window. Indeed, I was considering a upgrade to Linux on my old Optiplex, however, I am NOT Linux savvy (sorry Anthony), and figuring out how to do a fileserver for a low end PC like that is just beyond me. I also have had some negative experiences with older versions of Linux, like going to bed one night, and waking up the next morning to find half the OS is just gone (I wasn't the only one that had this issue. A friend of mine had the same issue at around the same time, maybe 2 months later, and she is an amazing Linux nerd). Since the Optiplex died, it's a moot point anyway... At least with Linux, if I wanted to brick my machine by installing 'wtfnotavirus.rpm', I could do so anyway. PS: The laptop pretty much only does basic google searches (looking for guides for games, like Borderlands), has a Youtube window open, and that's pretty much it. I actually run out of RAM and my browser crashes if I try loading up Netflix, and I generally don't run software I don't trust, plus I use Opera (switching back to FireFox soon), with uBlock, so I'm really not worried about hostile software invading my laptop. Plus, it has a Pentium Silver N5000 CPU, and 4GB of RAM. I just don't have the spare resources to let Microsoft's useless garbageware run and suck up precious CPU cycles. Opening Youtube in a single tab in a single browser window pegs this thing at 80% Memory usage, opening a second window puts Youtube into virtual memory, and it just chugs like a mofo. Maybe it's time for me to get a Razer Blade Stealth?

Hi, I recently bought a camera that doesn't need software apparently and it doesn't seem to work on any program i run, only the microphone. I checked if I needed to update windows but it keep loading and loading but nothing ever happens, also my windows defender is unable to turn on but I don't have any other antivirus on my PC. Im running on a windows 10 trial version and the version is 1809. Just came from microsoft tech support because about 30 people viewed but no one replied... Specs: Ryzen 5 2600 CPU 2x8Gb 3200mhz of ram GTX 1070 Aorus GPU 8Gb of VRAM

I can't turn on Windows Defender no matter what i've tried. I deinstalled Spybot, used Malwarebytes cleaning tool (which was installed a long time ago) and cleaned the registry of unused entries. Also tried enabling it through the registry by changing ownership to Administrators and setting the turn off hex value from 1 to 0. But nothing works, it still says "Some settings are managed by your organization" and I can't do anything. And I know it disables when another antivirus is installed but everything is uninstalled now. Anyone else have experience with this?

So I am a little worried. Having reset my computer, I only have Windows defender as my antivirus. I plugged in my microphone which is called "Microphone TP6920" and I get a notification from Windows Defender that it is removing the trojan from my computer. "Voiceclient.exe" was the file in hand and was said to execute commands from the attacker according to Windows Defender. The thing that startles me is though, is it really removed? Here is a picture of how my microphone looks like this (To be honest, I didn't even know it was a Chinese brand). I bought it off Amazon 2 years ago and have been using it since then. But looking back, every computer since then has had problems, could be coincidence but seems unlikely at this point. Anyone has any experience with this Microphone? Also could anyone explain to me what is a Trojan horse and how can I find out if my computer has? I'm quite worried at this point, hoping for any guidance in what to do now.

i noticed that my cpu would not down clock and would run at max turbo even at idle. A quick look in windows 10 task manager revealed that i had a constant write on my C: drive (SSD) of about 25 MB/s. Even at idle with no applications open for hours on end. turns out windows defender was constantly writing to c:/windows/logs and running about 15% CPU usage. after disabling windows defender anti-malware via gpedit.msc, my cpu now down clocks, while idle, my ssd sees much less activity and my cinebench score moved from 630 to 733. Is this a fluke on my PC or is it something that may be affecting others without them noticing. over the pass month ive had over 2 terabytes of data written to my ssd. My setup: i7-2600 @4.07ghz, 16gb, gtx 970, corsair neutron xt (SSD)

So in the past day Windows Defender has been picking up BitTorrent as a virus on my laptop. Never had an issue before, I haven't even used BitTorrent recently, so I have no idea why its complaining about it. I know i can just add it to my exceptions but any clue on why defender is picking it up in the first place? And no I'm not using it for illegal cracked copies of games or anything.

On the MSI GS63VR it came pre-installed with Norton. I deleted Norton and I tried to turn on Windows Defender. When I tried to turn on Windows Defender it pops up with programs & features from the control panel. In Windows Defender it says real-time protection is handled by another AV program. I don't even have Norton. It also says that Windows Defender is off because I have an existing AV program and that it wants me to uninstall the existing AV program to turn on Windows Defender. If anyone can give me help, thanks.

Alrighty....I'm an idiot so I managed to get a trojan virus in my PC that keeps on reappearing even after Malware Bytes removing it as well as Windows Defender. Anyone got any ideas as to how I can remove this annoying thing that keeps on causing Windows Defender to say "removing some malware." I've tried the offline windows defender as well This keeps on annoying me every 2 minutes Clicking on remove doesnt do shit since it just keeps on popping back

So I have recently ran into a problem activating memory integrity for Windows 10. For one reason or another I had disabled it, and when I went to reactivate it, I was informed by a wonderfully vague notification that I have some form of incompatibility. I do not believe this to be the case, since I had been running it before with no issue. I was wondering if anyone had a solution for this? I can't seem to figure out whats wrong. I run a Gigabyte Aorus Gaming K5 ax370 with a Ryzen 1600x. Virtualization and fTPM both are on.

Just completed a pc build and I have Windows 10 (Home 64-bit) everything ran great, still does except for one thing. Windows Defender seems to be constantly running. Go to task manager and its running at 6-7%. I have Corsair iCUE software and my total core package is running at 35-36 degrees celsius. It use to run at 27-28. Fans run for quite awhile before shutting off, I have Norton Anti virus software and it has been working great. Ever since I did the new Windows 10 update now my fans are running at high levels and Windows Defender is running most of the time. Can I shut it off as long as I have Norton running? If so how do you do it? Any ideas what's happening here? Thanks for reading, hope I can get some clarity here. I am not a gamer, I do real estate photography and use Lr & Ps in my work. I also don't surf the web and open up sites I don't know, no porn either.

I somehow got malware on my pc. not sure how as I don't remember downloading anything suspicious. anyway, windows defender picked it up in a quick scan and says its been quarantined. im now doing a full scan to make sure I havnt missed anything else. my question is, do I have to do anything else? the things been quarantined, do I need to delete it, or will windows handle that for me? windows defender dosnt make it very clear, so id appreciate some clarification.