Windows Defender offline scan

What's the consensus on the WD offline scan, any good?

Yes. It can be useful for thoroughly cleaning an infected computer. Some malware is very difficult to remove when the system is up and running.

I cannot get the Defender offline scan to work. Hmmm. I don't know if it ever worked before. First time I tried it was today. Version 1809 Win 10 pro. Perfect running machine. No hiccups. SFC test passes. I click on offline scan and hit the "scan now" button and a box pops up. I say yes....then it does not do anything. No restart. Same if I try it from the elevated command prompt. Just hesitates for a second and goes back to a new elevated C prompt. Maybe a glitch with Windows ? I searched for a while and came up with nothing else to try. Other than that, Defender scans fine if I do it the normal way. No big deal but I am curios about this problem. Thanks for any ideas.

joe1982 said:

I cannot get the Defender offline scan to work. Hmmm. I don't know if it ever worked before. First time I tried it was today. Version 1809 Win 10 pro. Perfect running machine. No hiccups. SFC test passes. I click on offline scan and hit the "scan now" button and a box pops up. I say yes....then it does not do anything. No restart. Same if I try it from the elevated command prompt. Just hesitates for a second and goes back to a new elevated C prompt. Maybe a glitch with Windows ? I searched for a while and came up with nothing else to try. Other than that, Defender scans fine if I do it the normal way. No big deal but I am curios about this problem. Thanks for any ideas.

I found that there appears to be a bug in 1809 for Defender Offline. There is a registry key involved and if that doesn't exist yet then first time you try it It will fail - but then seems to work the second time. See this post and post #135 where I identify the key. Try creating it and set it to 0x0 if you do not yet have it.

Cumulative Update KB4480116 Windows 10 v1809 Build 17763.253 - Jan. 8 Windows Update - Page 14 - Windows 10 Forums

Thanks for the reply. I found the offlinescanrun and it is set to 0x00000000. I tried to modify to 1 then realized I should have left it at 0, and it said "Cannot edit OfflineScanRun: Error writing the value's new contents" So it is still 0. I am not proficient at registry mods so I need to be careful.

joe1982 said:

Thanks for the reply. I found the offlinescanrun and it is set to 0x00000000. I tried to modify to 1 and it said "Cannot edit OfflineScanRun: Error writing the value's new contents" I am not proficient at registry mods so I need to be careful.

Now the key exists, try running Defender Offline again. It should now be able to set the key to 1 itself to trigger the scan at next boot.

The key was there and set to 0, I didn't have to create it. I tried to run the scan offline again and nothing happened. The box did pop up asking for permission and I said yes and that was it. I checked regedit and the value is still at 0 and cannot change it. Hmmm Thanks. This is no big deal to me but is interesting.

Bree said:

I found that there appears to be a bug in 1809 for Defender Offline. There is a registry key involved and if that doesn't exist yet then first time you try it It will fail - but then seems to work the second time. See this post and post #135 where I identify the key. Try creating it and set it to 0x0 if you do not yet have it.

Cumulative Update KB4480116 Windows 10 v1809 Build 17763.253 - Jan. 8 Windows Update - Page 14 - Windows 10 Forums

Yet another example of sloppy MS software engineering

I guess there is not much I can do about it. The previous 7.58am event said the same thing, then I rebooted and tried to run the offline scan again.Then rebooted once again and copied the log. Thanks.

Hello. I now have the same problem. I have tried a few times to get offline scan to work and no joy. I found this thread. Did it work for anyone? I noticed that my machine does not have the referenced registry key...should I create it and, if so, what type of key do I select so as to enter 0?