Windows Defender stopping me from ejecting harddrive

Anonymous
2020-05-26T06:39:44+00:00

After uninstalling Norton (as it came preinstalled after on my computer) I started to experience an issue, whenever I would try to eject my hard drive I would get an error, after looking in event viewer I saw an error talking about how msmpeng.exe was stopping it from ejecting. After researching I found out that this task was windows defender.

However I have tried everything to stop this from happening to no avail, Ive gone into its settings to turn it off and yet it still runs in the background still blocking be from ejecting my hard drive, attempting to close msmpeng.exe in task manager gives me an error that I dont have permission (with no way to change this) I have then followed guides about going into edit to make a file called disablelivespywareprotection (something like that) and now Im out of answers, Am I now forced to just unplug it unsafely or something? please help

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-11-10T11:14:39+00:00

    I already have that turned off

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-11-10T16:06:36+00:00

    I already have that turned off

    @_ATOmix_, 

    As a workaround, see my post (Oct 18) about adding an exclusion in windows defender, on page 2 of this thread. 

    Look at the drive letter(s) assigned to the external drive and add, for each external drive, to the exclusion list of folders in windows defender, then reboot.

    That works for me when MsMpEng.exe is the cause of the block showing in event viewer.

    (Assuming that the drive letter stays the same every time you insert the external drive.  😊)

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-11-12T04:03:51+00:00

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-11-25T06:29:50+00:00

    I've been having this issue for months with Windows 1909.  It didn't occur very often, but lately it seems to be doing it every time.  I have an eSATA dock with two external drives that I alternate backups to and one USB drive.  It only does it to the eSATA drives.  It seems that the longer the drive is connected, the more likely it is to happen.

    Yesterday I backed up to one of the eSATA drives and the USB drive.  As soon as I turned on the eSATA dock with the drive in it, Windows Defender began scanning it.  The backup took approx. 40 minutes, then I plugged in the USB drive to copy some files from the eSATA drive to the USB drive.  When I was done, Defender was still scanning the eSATA drive.  When I tried to use the safely eject device from the task bar, Defender immediately stopped the scan, yet it still prevented me from ejecting it.

    It did not scan the USB drive at all while plugged in and didn't prevent me from ejecting it.

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-11-25T07:30:46+00:00

    @Mean Jim, 

     I have eSATA drives too,  since Microsoft did not fix this bug yet and they seem to be ignoring the complaints ,  in the meantime waiting for a fix, I worked around the problem by adding the devices to the exclusion list as shown in the snap shot below for the defender setting exclusion list.

    Just verify in the event viewer for the system if you get error 225 with the message showing MsMpEng.exe as the program that stopped the removal.

    The application \Device\HarddiskVolume3\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Platform\4.18.2004.6-0*MsMpEng.exe* with process id 4380 stopped the removal or ejection for the device USB\VID_1058&PID_25FE\575834314131393638334334.

    Assuming that your external devices always have the same letter(s) assigned you can exclude them.

    There is no point on scanning them if they are just backups of internal drives, if there is a bad file to detect it will be detected in the source drive anyway....

    In the sample below, it excludes Drive E:\ and Drive F:\

    Just use the drive letters assigned to your external drives and then reboot.

    This works fine for me, assuming that the culprit is MsMpEng.exe and not some other program or process..

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