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Moises Hernandez

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Virus stops Windows Defender Offline before it can finish scanning

Hello everyone. I seem to be have a virus/malware in my computer that keeps turning off my defenses before they have a chance to detect/delete the problem.

I have Windows Defender and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware as security on my computer and when I try to run a scan on my computer to detect the virus the scan stops midway (for Windows Defender [W.D]) and says that it could not finish the process and that I should restart my computer to fix the problem. I've tried doing that and it doesn't fix the problem. When I run Malwarebytes it finishes the scan but it doesn't find the virus.

I know the virus is there because I had the very same issue a few months ago when I noticed my computer started acting up and it wouldn't let me finish the windows defender scan. I took a look into it and did all the basic stuff: run the scans on safe-mode with network on and off (virus would still stop the scan before it could finish), run task manager to see if I could find any odd programs running in the background, and eventually I ran Windows Defender Offline from an USB and it found 13 severe infections in my computer. After I found the infections and deleted them I realized that the virus had been preventing my computer and Windows Defender from updating for over a month and a half (even though the computer would show that the were no new updates available and W.D. would show that it was up to date and everything was "good").

Well now I'm having the same issue and I ran the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool in safe-mode and while the scan was running it said that it had detected 16 potential threats but when the scan finished it said that the computer was clean and the program didn't find any threats which leads me to believe that the virus is doing something to stop all of the scans before they can find and delete it. Windows Defender Offline doesn't even work anymore as well because when I run the scan it stops after about %85-90 done and says that the scan could not be completed and that I need to restart my computer...

Can anyone help me figure this out? I don't want to have to reset my entire computer because I have so much school and personal stuff in it :(
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John
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Tom Cieslik
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If you have access to another PC, remove the hard drive and attach as a slave to the good PC...

By not booting from it, you remove the problem of the virus running before your AV programs!

Use your AV tools on the good PC to remove the malware & viruses from the (now) slaved hard drive!
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Second McKnife.
Happy new year, everyone!

I am not interested in stopping the auto closure and the funny pointing - that is something the author should do.
But the author should know: cleaning an infected computer is no way to restore security unless you are an expert at it. You won't become an expert using tools and those will never work perfectly, no matter which or how many you use. So my advice for the future is to create regular full-system image backups and restore these in case you get aware of an infection.
You should check your disk as well, or all your data might go south pretty soon, if your luck changes.
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