Windows defender full and quick scans

Fast/quick Scan either daily or weekly on autopilot, AV and malware prevention is real time so it knows that there is stuff happening when it happens. There is not much point doing full system wide scans all the time you should really only be doing full scans if you think you are infected.

I only do a full scan like every six months sometimes yearly otherwise its not really that big of a deal any good AV will pick up stuff as soon as it comes onto the computer, combined with other safeguards and good practices then malware is not even really on the cards.

Also depends on the threat if it warrants a full scan or not. No point doing a full scan for a pup or false positive right? just two examples.

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if you read over these its telling you the same line of thinking if you read between the lines.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...e-fb2664201f29

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...e-fb2664201f29

Basically run quick scans periodically as it just checks active memory for anything malicious. Full scan will be detecting files and code sitting on your computer that should not be there but this is a catch 22 as any good AV will catch these before they come onto the computer before hand anyway.

Yes stuff can get past but its a round robin effect the real time heuristics and other methods will pick it up if it tries to run anything and then you just do a full scan when that happens or outside of that at least every 6 months or so.

Generally if you trust your prevention methods and your computing habits then you know you don't really need to worry about manually scanning all the time its wasted I/O for no real benefit.

SFC scan is also a pseudo Malware prevention tool so that it will replace critical system files that don't line up, you can also run MSERT when it releases or there is known compromise to the OS.

All of these don't need to be run like clockwork either if you already have good systems in place.

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You should also be utilizing avenues like VT on untrusted sources where you don't know the reliability of some files. There is enough cotton wool out there now and if you utilize it then these things are not really on the forefront. There is plenty of other areas to go into like sandboxing and networking but the list is quite big and subject to lengthy discussion.

I personally feel confident enough to relay these things. Some people out there seem to have bad luck but these are also the types of people that use computers but don't really know how to define them.