Windows Defender Fails to Scan or Skips Some Files

By Timothy Tibbetts

on 06/29/2023

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A recent bug has appeared in Windows Defender in Windows 10 that can cause some virus scans to fail and or show a message that tells you that some unspecified items were skipped during the scan." Here's the fix.

The bug affects Windows Defender not scanning network files, so, as far as we can tell, if you don't scan files on a network, you don't have a problem.

1: Registry Files

We've created registry files to do the work for you - Enable or Disable Network Scanning in Windows Defender

You can manually make the changes by following our tutorial here.

2: Group Policy Editor

Open Group Policy Editor and navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Defender Antivirus > Scan.

Windows 10 Home users can enable Group Policy Editor.

Double-click Scan network files.

Change the setting to Enabled and click OK.

3: PowerShell

Open PowerShell as Administrator and type in Set-MpPreference –DisableScanningNetworkFiles.

To disable, change the 0 to 1.

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