Windows Defender Antivirus Network Inspection Service issues since Windows 10 2004 update

Anonymous
2020-08-06T08:15:09+00:00

I got the 2004 update yesterday and that went well enough otherwise but I am having a problem with the Windows Defender Antivirus Network Inspection Service that I did not have previously. 

  1. I noticed in Event Viewer several Errors that began immediately upon completion of the update last night: 

The Microsoft Defender Antivirus Network Inspection Service service depends on the Microsoft Defender Antivirus Network Inspection System Driver service which failed to start because of the following error: 

The supplied user buffer is not valid for the requested operation.

  1. Further inspection has revealed that there is now a problem with Real Time Updates. 

Microsoft Defender Antivirus Real-Time Protection feature has encountered an error and failed.

  Feature: Network Inspection System

Error Code: 0x8007042c

Error description: The dependency service or group failed to start. 

Reason: The system is missing updates that are required for running Network Inspection System.  Install the required updates and restart the device.

I've got this error repeatedly (3002). 

  1. I went into security and maintenance to see what was going on with my security settings. That is not showing anything "wrong." 
  2. The Network Inspection Service is configured to manual, not automatic. I can't change this. 
  3. Real-time protection is on, and has been on. On Virus & threat protection settings, all of those are still toggled on, and those settings are the same before and after the upgrade. I haven't tried turning them on and off again yet. 
  4. I already did the August Safety scan, but I downloaded a fresh copy and am re-running it. 
  5. I did dism and sfc checks and they showed no problems that needed repair. 

Something is definitely wrong with the install of Windows Defender tho... Help? How do I fix this and stop the errors and get it reconfigured properly. Do I have to reinstall it?

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Security and privacy

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-08-08T07:52:28+00:00

    So, ignoring the "reset windows" suggestion because...yeah, not doing that...I tried an in-place upgrade and upon initial boot the behavior was gone. However, upon reboot it returned. I gave up for yesterday and went to sleep.

    I woke up this morning and decided to try turning off Core Isolation/Virtualization Based Security. That fixed it; Microsoft Defender Antivirus Network Inspection Service now starts and runs without complaint. Apparently Microsoft messed up an update to Defender or something else and caused this to start happening; it's not like this is the first time they have deployed a broken Defender update.

    Do you have Core Isolation/VBS enabled, khynnea?

    Edit: Verified repeatable resolution on a second machine; my Windows 10 Home 2004 laptop.

    Thank you so much for this insight and troubleshooting.

    I do indeed have core isolation/VBS enabled. And I literally never would have thought to try this because this is one thing I would never turn off on my machine. 

    And it honestly boggles my mind that there would be such a fatal flaw between the realtime antivirus inspection service and a core security feature... meh. With this bug, the service isn't running but there is no indication that it is not running from the main Windows Security UI, no indication that there is a problem in the registry. And multiple 3rd party antivirus scans turned up no issue. So either something -really- seriously wrong is present or it just happened to coincide with the 2004 upgrade. 

    To be fair, the recent Defender update that was pushed a few days prior could have been the culprit and not the 2004 build. I'm absolutely hate troubleshooting windows anything. 

    Someone with access to 1903, 1909, 2004 builds would have to point to where the problem is, and whether it is part of 2004 or Defender. 

    Thank you so much for the peace of mind your troubleshooting discovery brings.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-08-08T07:45:06+00:00

    C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Network Inspection System is empty on my system (other than the support folder). Is this the way it should be?

    I cannot tell you if it "should" be this way, but I rebuilt my machine and got it to where it is working, and it looks this way (with hidden folders and files visible) to me. Someone with more knowledge would have to address the "should." 

    The exe is elsewhere.

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-08-07T17:59:18+00:00

    I am having these problems also, and I am on Win 10 Pro 64-bit version 1909 with a Dell Optiplex 7010 that has 16GB RAM.

    Following pntless's suggestion, I have turned off Core Isolation/Virtualization Based Security, and the problems have stopped.

    MS - please fix.

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-08-07T17:57:17+00:00

    C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Network Inspection System is empty on my system (other than the support folder). Is this the way it should be?

    I don't know if that is how it is supposed to be, but I can confirm the same on my systems. The only thing I have in that folder is an empty Support folder.

    This seems to be an issue with the latest public Defender Platform, 4.18.2007.8.

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-08-07T17:46:03+00:00

    C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Network Inspection System is empty on my system (other than the support folder). Is this the way it should be?

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