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I have a problem with the October patches.  Normally, Windows Update downloads the patches. installs all, and then asks me to reboot.  Today, I had three updates when I did a Windows Update – flash, Windows 10, and .NET.  WU downloaded flash and .NET, and was downloading Win 10.  WU installed flash and .NET while Win 10 was downloading.  WU wanted a reboot.  I expected WU to install the Win 10 update before the reboot.  I waited five minutes after the download completed, and nothing.  So I rebooted.  No problems.  After the reboot, WU somehow had not saved the downloaded Win 10 update, so it downloaded it again.  Now WU tells me that the update is 100% downloaded, but it is NOT being installed.  I have no idea how to get this update installed – 2020-10 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 2004 for x64-based Systems (KB4579311).

I had never seen the problem with my Windows 7 system, which I installed in May 2011.  I have Windows 8.1 installed on a laptop that I “babysit” and maybe use twice a month.  I have not seen this on 8.1, but my usage might not be enough for me to have experienced the problem.

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SkipH

I noticed last Thursday that Defender was not being updated; I checked and found that periodic updates had been turned off.  I have no idea who did this and why.  Maybe the Defender EventLog will have information as to when, but it probably will not tell me who or why.  I re-enabled periodic scans.  Last night at 20:37.  It terminated at  21:00 – abnormally.  There was no information as to why.  At 21:02 I started another full scan, and it ran to completion, finishing at 00:22.  Even though I have two other products (WRSA and Spybot Search-and-Destroy), both of which have told me that they can co-exist with Defender, this behavior of Defender, which is supposed to be monitoring my machine, is not very useful.

I ran a full scan last night, and it took about three hours.  There were no problems.  I have reported the executable that was using 81% CPU during my afternoon scan to the vendor or that executable.  Thanks for the WIN+A help.  I will be monitoring my machine to see if Defender updates stop again.

I ran a manual scan yesterday, and after around 3 hours there were two gray windows that appeared from the right side of the screen.  The windows vanished before I had a chance to read them (what is the purpose of that – a windows I am not expecting that I cannot read quickly).  Then I looked at the Defender EventLog, and EventID 1002 said that the scan had “been stopped before completion”.  I did not stop the scan., and I have no idea what cancelled the scan.  I tried another scan this afternoon, and my machine hung; all processes were “not responding” (whatever that term means).  I had to hit the “reset” button to reboot.

Per the posting above – if Defender will not honor a scheduled periodic full scan because I have another program that “MAY” compete, then I would expect Defender to tell me that my scheduled scan will not run.  Maybe MS never thought of this “user-friendly” warning, or maybe the Task Scheduler is a completely separate application that has no idea that the task it is scheduling will not run.

I noticed recently that on my Windows 10 Professional 2004 system MS had auto-installed Candy Crusher Friends.  I have no idea what this is.  I uninstalled it.  This morning MS auto-installed (after I had delayed as long as possible)

KB4566782 2020-08 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 2004
KB4569745 2020-08 Cumulative Update for .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8
KB4566754 2020-08 Microsoft Edge Update for Windows 10 Version 2004

I will report any problems.  But, in reviewing the EventID 19 entries in the System EventLog, I saw that the following had been installed at 6:50 this morning:

9WZDNCRFHWKN-MICROSOFT.WINDOWSSOUNDRECORDER
9WZDNCRFJ3PR-MICROSOFT.WINDOWSALARMS
9WZDNCRFHVN5-MICROSOFT.WINDOWSCALCULATOR
Microsoft.XboxApp

I have no idea what these are; I do not own an Xbox.  Is there a way to stop installation of these?

Mu full scan did not run Sunday morning, so I changed it to Monday morning.  Steill no full scan.  I just checked, and “Periodic scans” is still set to “On”.

I looked closely at the Defender EventLog, and I saw some EventID 5007 entries.  One told me that Defender had been disabled; the reason is not given in that EventLog entry.  And when I went to check on my scheduled Defender scan, it was not there, and there was no option to enable one.  I re-enabled periodic scanning.  I had to exit the Task Scheduler and re-enter it to see the scan option.  I set a full scan for Sundays at 00:01, and I will check in the morning if it ran.  I did notice that when I re-enabled Defender, it automatically updated the pattern definition.  And I will monit0r the Defender EventLog daily for further 5007 entries.

I just checked the EventLog, and my last Defender pattern update was 1.321.1718.0 installed 08/18/2020 at 23:37.  When I was running Windows 7 I got a pattern update auto-installed about once or twice a day.  I would hope that my pausing Windows 10 updates until the end of August did not stop Defender pattern updates from being installed.

 

In the hidden icons, I see “Windows Security – Actions  recommended.”  But when I click on that icon, I see nothing abnormal (per the screenshot attached).

I checked the Defender EventLog yesterday (Sunday), and my Friday evening full Defender scan did NOT run.  There was  nothing in the EventLog that had any information about the scan starting or not running.

I manually ran a full scan.  It took about 4 hours to complete.  I wanted to see how many files/objects had been scanned, but I was not at the computer when the scan ended, and the scan window vanished.  The EventLog did show the scan’s completion.  I did see a gray window from the right margin that said something about items being skipped, but that informational window disappeared before I could read or capture its content.  If there is information that MS deems important to tell me, then that informational window should remain on the screen until I have read the contents and closed the window.  I was dismayed that during the scan, the increasing count of objects/files scanned was displayed, but the names of the files being scanned was missing.  I would have liked to have seen what was being scanned as the scan was progressing.

Thanks for the Power Shell code.  I am new to Power Shell, so I do not know where to store the file to make it accessible to Power Shell.

I want Defender to scan everything on my C-drive and my smaller FAT32 D-drive, where I have mostly data and scripts that I have written.  I see no need for Defender to scan the other disk, as for many years I had MSE on Windows 7 scan those disk every week.  My Windows 7 MSE scans were starting at 7 PM Friday and sometimes did not complete until Monday morning.  That is why I eventually told MSE to omit those disks during its Win 7 scans.  And I told Defender in Win 10 to do the same.

I cannot believe that putting anything in an exclusion list would tell Defender that this is no longer a “full” scan, so my scheduling of a weekly full scan should be bypassed.  That does not seem logical to me, but some of the things that MS does in Windows also do not seem logical to me.  If that were the case, then what is the purpose of the exclusion list?  I have no idea what is scanned during a quick scan; that does not run long enough to warrant an exclusion list.  So, the exclusion list must pertain to a full scan.

 

That post does not apply.  It talks about excluding \etc\hosts from a scan, which is a bad thing to do.  I have not manually edited that file.  I have multiple disks in my machine, and I have told Defender to omit scans on disks that I do not modify and rarely access.

Here is an update.  Last night (08/15) I looked at the Defender Event Log, and the last full scan was 07/12.  So I decided to start a full scan.  In doing research on how to run a full scan manually, I saw that in Windows Security –> Virus and Threat Protection, the setting for “periodic scans” was set to No.  I set it to Yes.  I have no idea how that setting got changed ; I had set it on 07/11 at 22:38.  Maybe the change was made when my machine was auto-updated to 2004; I do not know.  When I made the change, there was a gray “window” that appeared from the right side that I was not expecting.  I was unable to read the contents before that “window” vanished back into the right margin.

I then decided to start a full scan manually at 23:14.  When I did, I looked at the Task Manager, and I saw that a scan was running.  Then I went to bed.  I checked this morning, and the full scan was no longer running.  The Defender Event Log hourly summary says that the last full scan was  on 07/12.  There was no Log entry about a scan started and abnormally terminating.

 

I had noticed that my Defender patterns had not been updating; the last update was 08/04 at 06:54 (pattern 557).  The Event Log this morning shows that pattern 1508 was installed at 23:19 AND at 23:30 last night.  Was Defender not being updated because I had the “periodic updates” setting to NO?  It seems to me that if I have Defender installed, then I would want the patterns to be updated automatically.  I never had this problem with Windows 7.

In Windows 7 Defender (MSE)  was a “stand-alone” product.  I could see from the icon in the System Tray what the MSE status was.  And everything I needed to do with MSE (pattern update, schedule a scan, run a scan) was done through that application.   Now, in Windows 19, I schedule a scan via the Task Scheduler, and run a scan from another application.  If I schedule a full Defender scan via the Task Scheduler, I would hope that the Task Scheduler would alert me if a Defender setting does not match, and a scan will not be run.

In summary, I have NO IDEA what is happening with Defender – pattern updates and full scans.  And, after three weeks, I still have NO responses to my Feedback.