Microsoft Defender Antivirus is a powerful tool that finds and removes malware from your PC. Here's how to use it in Windows 10 or 11 to scan your PC. Important: Before you use Microsoft Defender Offline, make sure to save any open files and close apps and programs. Open your Windows Security settings.

Each release of the tool helps detect and remove current, prevalent malicious software. This malicious software includes viruses, worms, and Trojan horses. Microsoft uses several metrics to determine the prevalence of a malicious software family and the damage that can be associated with it.

To deploy the tool in an enterprise environment, you can use one or more of the following methods: Windows Server Update Services. Microsoft Systems Management Software (SMS) software package. Group Policy-based computer startup script. Group Policy-based user logon script.

If you experience frequent game crashes or instability while playing State of Decay 2, Sea of Thieves, or Crackdown 3 on Windows 10, this may mean that your antivirus software is scanning the game. You can set file exclusions to prevent this from happening. Collapse all.

You can start a scan for malware any time you like. Note: Microsoft Defender currently offers anti-malware on Windows, Android, and macOS. From the Microsoft Defender dashboard. If you want a deeper scan, instead of selecting Quick scan in step 3, select Scan options and choose the type of scan you want.

Find out how to submit a request for a refund for a purchase of digital Xbox content.

Discusses how to remove viruses, spyware, rogue software, or malware using Microsoft Security Essentials, Microsoft Safety Scanner and Microsoft Defender Offline.

Windows Media Player and other apps use codecs to play and create media files. A codec can consist of two parts: an encoder that compresses the media file (encoding) and a decoder that decompresses the file (decoding). Some codecs include both parts, and other codecs only include one of them.

Windows Security has reputation-based protection that can help protect your PC from potentially unwanted applications. Potentially unwanted app blocking was first introduced in the Windows 10 May 2020 update and is turned off by default for enterprise and consumer customers.

Turn Windows Security on or off. When you get a new device and start up Windows 10 for the first time, the antivirus protection that comes installed with the device is your default security app. However, Windows Security is pre-installed and ready for you to use at any time.