Windows Defender is Microsoft’s free, built-in antivirus and antimalware utility in Windows. Working in conjunction with the other security features of the operating system, Windows Defender generally does a good job of keeping your Windows 10 PC safe from common viruses and malware. But no antivirus utility is perfect, and it’s still possible to be infected in Windows 10. The problem is that advanced viruses and malware can now embed themselves into the operating system and disable the very features and precautions that are meant to prevent such an infiltration. In such a situation, an antivirus utility like Windows Defender may not be reliable, or work at all, because the virus or malware has broken or limited its capabilities. In this case, you generally need to turn to what’s called an “offline” tool. The purpose of an offline antivirus is that it is run outside of your operating system, thus (hopefully) avoiding the viruses and malware that have compromised your system. In some cases, antivirus developers provide special boot disks to conduct an offline virus scan. In this case, you restart your PC and boot to the antivirus disk. Your infected operating system remains dormant while the antivirus application performs its scan. This allows the antivirus to both scan your PC without fear of being infected, as well as properly detect and remove files that may be inaccessible while the operating system is running. Instead of requiring a special boot disk, however, Microsoft has given Windows Defender its own offline mode that is simple to use in Windows 10 with just a single click. Here’s a quick look at using Windows Defender to perform an offline scan for viruses and malware.
To get started, log into your Windows 10 PC and launch the Windows Defender Security Center. You can do this by searching for it via the Start Menu or by selecting it from the All Apps list. Once the Security Center window appears, select Virus & Threat Protection (the Shield icon beneath Home in the list on the left side of the window). This is where you can perform a quick scan and configure your scan settings and definition update preferences. We need one more step, however, so click Run a new advanced scan, located beneath the Quick Scan button. The Advanced Scans window gives you the option to run a full scan of everything on your PC, a custom scan of only certain locations, or the Windows Defender Offline Scan, which is what we’re looking for. Click the radio button to select the offline scan option and then click Scan Now. Windows will warn you that the offline scan requires the user to reboot their PC. Make sure all of your work and open applications are saved and then proceed, being sure to accept any User Access Control prompts. After a few moments, your PC will reboot. Instead of booting to Windows, however, a similar boot screen will instead take you to a special instance of the Windows Defender interface. At this point, Defender is running completely independently of your operating system, giving it full access to any potentially infected files while minimizing the risk of becoming compromised itself. The time the scan takes to complete will vary depending on the size of your drive and the speed of your hardware. Just be sure to let it finish. When it’s done, Defender will attempt to remove any infections it found. If it’s successful, it will reboot your PC back to Windows, where you can verify that the issue has indeed been resolved. If Defender was unable to correct the issue you may need to consider the use of offline versions of other tools, or more drastic measures such as reformatting the hard drive. In any case, just make sure to back up your data, but be careful not to back up any infected files, as that could lead to your clean new Windows installation becoming infected immediately.
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Windows Defender Offline Error Code 0x8004cc01
Windows Defender, the built in antivirus solution in Windows 10, is fairly good. While Windows Defender is no match to popular antivirus software from Kaspersky, Bitdefender or ESET, it’s definitely offers basic security on PCs where there is no third-party antivirus software is installed.
Jun 25, 2018 However, when you run Windows Defender Offline, it will look for malware in a clean environment, before even starting the operating system. How to run Windows Defender Offline On Windows 10. Before you activate Windows Defender Offline, save all your work and close the apps that are running. When you are done with that, follow the steps below. To run Windows Defender Offline from the endpoint, the user must be logged in with administrator privileges. Windows Defender Offline updates. Windows Defender Offline uses the most recent protection updates available on the endpoint; it's updated whenever Windows Defender Antivirus is updated.
Windows Defender Offline Scan Results
Not all malicious and potentially unwanted software can be removed when Windows is running as they load with Windows operating system. Because of this reason, many popular antivirus programs request the user restart Windows to completely remove the detected malicious code.
To help users, many antivirus developers provide an offline version of their antivirus software so that users can scan their PC and remove threats that cannot be removed otherwise using the standard method.
As you likely know, Microsoft has also been offering Windows Defender Offline Tool for years to help users remove malware and other potentially unwanted programs from Windows PC without having to boot into Windows.
Windows Defender offline scan feature in Windows 10
Before this, Windows 10 users had to download and use the Windows Defender Offline Tool from Microsoft and then prepare bootable USB/CD of it in order to perform an offline scan. You no longer need to download and prepare Windows Defender Offline Tool as Microsoft has added offline scanning capability to Windows Defender and users running Windows 10 build 14271 (check your Windows 10 build number) and later can use this feature to perform Windows Defender Offline scan without downloading the tool.
According to Microsoft, on Windows 10, Windows Defender Offline feature is completely automated. This means that, whenever Windows Defender comes across a hard to remove malicious code, it will alert the user to run the Defender Offline scan.
How to run and use Windows Defender offline scan feature in Windows 10
Step 1: Open Settings app by either clicking Settings in left-side of the Start menu or simultaneously pressing Windows logo and I keys.
Step 2: In the Settings app, click Update & Security.
Step 3: Click Windows Defender.
Windows Defender Offline Update
Step 4: Finally scroll down the page to see Windows Defender Offline section. Click the button labelled Scan Offline to restart your PC.
You will see “your PC will be restarted in a minute” message.
Step 5: During the restart, you will see the following Windows Defender Offline loading screen before you see the Windows Defender screen.
The Windows Defender will automatically start scanning your PC and will remove malicious and unwanted programs that Defender can’t remove otherwise.
Windows Defender Offline Scan Repair
If Windows Defender antivirus definitions are not up to date, you can switch to the Update tab and then click Update button. Note that you might get “Virus and spyware definitions couldn’t be updated” error if you are using Wi-Fi. When we tried updating definitions after connecting an Ethernet cable on your test machine, definitions were updated without any issues.
Windows Defender Offline Download
The Defender might take up to 20 minutes to complete its job. And Windows Defender’s offline scan is done, your will see the lock screen.