Overview
On our image of Windows 10, your machine is protected by Microsoft's built-in security program, Windows Defender. Windows Defender provides realtime scanning of your downloads and your computer for potential threats. In the event that you need to scan your computer for threats, Windows Defender offers this functionally as well.
Process
To scan your computer with Windows Defender to look for potential threats, follow these steps:
- First, we will need to start Windows Defender. You can do this by clicking on the Windows Icon in the lower left corner of the screen, typing Windows Defender, and clicking on Windows Defender Security Center.
- Here you can view the status of your device (protected vs theatened), and clicking on the shield icon will allow us to navigate to the security scanner.
- From here, you can run a quick scan to check for any potential threats. A quick scan is often enough to verify that your device is secure, or not. If the software finds any threats, it will highlight them in red and notify you of the danger while places the files in quarantine where they can't harm your machine and can be removed. You can also run an advanced scan that will scan your data in deeper detail to find other potential threats.
- As noted, sometimes an advanced scan is required to fully isolate and remove threats. A full scan will take longer than a quick scan, but it will comb through all running applications and saved data on the computer to look for hazards. The offline scan is particularly useful for removing sticky threats that rely on your Internet connection to hide.
For additional information, check these categories in the Knowledge Base:
More Windows 10 guides can be found here.