A bug in Windows Defender Makes it Skip Files from Scan

Windows Defender Secuirty Center Icon Big Red

For the past couple of weeks, Windows 10 users have been reporting that Windows Defender scans are skipping files due to a configured exclusion or network scanning setting. A notification about skipped files appears for users who have no exclusion configured.

A Windows notification appears after a Quick Scan or Full Scan, telling that some items were skipped due to an exclusion. Here is how it looks:

Defender Notification. Image credits: Bleeping Computer

However, there are no exclusions configured in Windows Security, as shown in the screenshot below.

Defender Exclusions. Image Credits: Bleeping Computer

The issue is not confirmed by Microsoft yet, so there is no solution available at this moment.

According to research by Bleeping Computer, Defender has started misbehaving on March 10th, 2020, after the corresponding Patch Tuesday.

The issue affects the anti-malware client version 4.18.2003.6, and above.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

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