Windows Defender, "Items Skipped During Scan"

Anonymous
2020-03-10T15:47:27+00:00

I keep getting this notification after quick scans, "Windows Defender skipped an item due to exclusions or network protection settings."

To make this clear: I don't have ANY exclusions, and as far as I'm aware, I haven't changed my network protection settings in the past. 

What's going on? Is this malware, or a bug with the new update? How do I fix this? I want to be reassured that I'm safe, this isn't very reassuring.

EDIT: Thank you to Techradar for bringing this issue to light. If any employees read this, could you perhaps re-title it in a way which doesn't make users feel so endangered by the bug? All of us have come to the conlusion that (especially with MBAM) we should be clear.

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Security and privacy

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Günter Born 49,461 Reputation points
2020-03-25T08:23:30+00:00

Microsoft has released an update to fix that behavior, see Update KB4052623: Microsoft fixes Defender ScanSkip Bug. See also the marked answer.

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  1. Günter Born 49,461 Reputation points
    2020-03-24T00:26:45+00:00

    After discussing this behavior within my blog Windows 10: Defender skips elements during scan, the reason for the message became clear. Defender avoids to scan network files (I postulate, that Microsoft has changed that recently). 

    You can ignore the warning - or you may use the workaround (which isn't recommended due to performance issues) discussed within my blog post Windows 10: Fix for skipped Defender scans. I've now proof, that the behavior has been changed in March 2020 within Defender's internal default settings (before March 2020 Defender scans network shares - now this is deactivated by default). 

    HTH

    Addendum: Microsoft has released an update to fix that behavior, see Update KB4052623: Microsoft fixes Defender ScanSkip Bug.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-03-23T17:16:03+00:00

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-03-23T07:06:47+00:00

    I getting the same message/problem and I'm also worried too. :(

    I filed the problem through Feedback Hub, but don't how to find my report?

    Hopefully Microsoft will fix it sometime soon?

    I did a complete reinstall from USB key of my Windows 10. The problem disappeared until I ran Windows Updates, which installed KB4551762 and KB4537572 (which is NET Framework update, I believe). Then the problem came back. I think it is the KB4551762 that does it?

    Hmm, I have several packages for KB4537572, but no KB4551762, so I don't think that's the problem, but thank you very much. I think it's a bug so I wish Microsoft would fix it.

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-03-23T02:25:10+00:00

    I getting the same message/problem and I'm also worried too. :(

    I filed the problem through Feedback Hub, but don't how to find my report?

    Hopefully Microsoft will fix it sometime soon?

    I did a complete reinstall from USB key of my Windows 10. The problem disappeared until I ran Windows Updates, which installed KB4551762 and KB4537572 (which is NET Framework update, I believe). Then the problem came back. I think it is the KB4551762 that does it?

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
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