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. Anonymous
    2020-03-25T00:16:17+00:00

    have the same problem, await ms fix

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-03-25T00:46:49+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

    My questions is, I can understand ignoring network scans because of performance and traffic issues, but wouldn't that make viruses more vulnerable on the network?  Now people are saying don't do Power Shell or manual fixing, because that could hurt performance. We should wait for an official explanation from Microsoft.

    Jack

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-03-25T07:24:54+00:00

    Hello to you all,

    I don't usually comment on websites like these, but this recent issue with Windows Defender Antivirus really cost me so much time chasing my tail trying to work out what was going on.

    Anyway, I have recently searched manually for updates for Windows 10 and the following two files were downloaded and installed today:

    Security Intelligence Update for Windows Defender Antivirus - KB2267602 (Version 1.313.24.0)

    Update for Windows Defender Antivirus antimalware platform - KB4052623 (Version 4.18.2003.8)

    After re-starting my laptop (don't ask me why I did it), I straight away carried out a quick scan of my laptop using Windows Defender Antivirus and the problem with the notification of "Item skipped during scan" had gone.

    I wish you all luck after downloading the updates and hope you have the same outcome as I did.

    Cheers from Australia!

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-03-25T07:51:01+00:00

    Thanks for sharing. Yep - the crisis is over, & "Defender, Settings, About" says...

    Thanks again. Microsoft, itself, never mentioned the problem or the cure.

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