Windows Defender Offline on Windows 7 machines DEFINITIONS OUT OF DATE

Hi David,

You are right, this problem is in Microsoft's court, and only they can fix it. We have no

idea when or if they will.

It appears that they have changed the WDO Program for the benefit of W10, and caused

it to be incompatible with the W7 application. What you observed on your DELL that

worked, reveals what they have changed. Instead of checking the viability of the defs on

your Media USB, the WDO Program now just issues a download attempt to update the

definitions, first thing. It doesn't matter if the defs on the USB are up to date or not. And

the defs go directly into the loaded WDO Program, like W10. Unlike the W7 application.

Most W7 machines cannot connect to the internet when booted to the Media USB.

Not sure why, but probably missing necessary software on the USB. However, this quirk

is not the primary cause of our problem. The change described above is.

Just curious;  Does your DELL that works have a Pentium 4 processor?

Here are a couple of substitutes for the WDO program that were offered in 2016, when

a problem very similar to this occurred. They should be safe, but use at your own risk.

http://support.kaspersky.com/us/viruses/rescuedisk

http://www.bitdefender.com/support/how-to-create-a-bitdefender-rescue-cd-627.html

Good Luck,  Glen

August 10, 2017.  I have the same problem as most everyone else on here.  It worked on one Dell PC I tested it on, but then failed on another Dell.   On the first one, it stated that the files were out of date, but apparently updated them after stating at first that it could not connect to the internet.  I was then able to scan.  On the second PC, it failed exactly the same way, but did NOT update the virus signatures (and why would they even need to be updated again since I just went through that), thus I am stuck.   Thanks to everyone who posted.  Your posts were informative.

I don't have months to wait for MS to fix this.  Is there software out there that can be trusted to work for a fee?  AVG?  I read nothing but bad things about AVG.  I checked into Webroot, but they said they don't make a bootable USB version., and I don't trust some of the websites for downloading A.V. software (that's asking for trouble).  The state of software quality has never been worse than it is today.

Glen,

Yes, I understood most of what you'd discussed already, I just wasn't certain of the age of the systems involved, since it seemed to affect newer systems rather than older.

I would suspect that any support for either Windows 7 or 8.1 will be delayed though, since nearly all resources have now shifted to Windows 10 and other more current products.  It was fairly clear from the notifications and layoffs over the last few years that all efforts were being placed into the future products at all levels, with the instantaneous removal of support for Windows Vista and others that recently reached end-of-life only reinforcing that trend.

So though it's not clear to me either what the support policy for WDO might be, the simple fact that this product is now embedded within Windows 10 itself means that the standalone product is now another orphan without a home.  Many of those involved in the original development and support of such tools are now either gone or at least transferred within Microsoft to other teams, so those responsible for the current security products may not even be aware of how they were supported in the past.

I had personally known the product manager who originally developed the alpha versions of both the WDO and Microsoft Safety Scanner tools, though he had moved to another product team shortly before the release of Windows 8, since there was no longer a need for his services to support Microsoft Security Essentials, as that was stable and being merged into Windows 8 Defender.

So I wouldn't be holding my breath regarding legacy support for anything preceding Windows 10 and its related support products.

Rob

Rob,

No, I don't think Skylake support has anything to do with this problem. It first came to

my attention in May. That was before, even the original deadline for Skylake device

support. I don't have any of those devices, but I can't determine if WDO is supported

through the extended support period for W7 or not. There are conflicting statements.

A problem with WDO on W7 occurred in 2016, first recognized in January, and not fixed

until June 29th. It had the same symptom. "Definitions Out Of Date". And it occurred after

activity regarding WDO in W10. Just as this one has occurred after W10 Creators update,

which produced heavy activity regarding WDO problems in W10.

Judging from that history, I suppose it may take a while before we see a fix. My query 

was to determine if we should have any hope or not.

Regards,  Glen