Windows Defender Scanning Options

[hlewton]

I am using Windows Defender (Windows Security) to protect from viruses. Is there a way to tell Windows Defender to do a daily scan at a particular time within Windows Defender itself? The only thing I found about this on the WEB says I have to set up a task in Task Scheduler. Never done that before and not sure about doing it now.

[StuartR]

You will have to use Task Scheduler for this. See https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... b330ed5d2d

[hlewton]

You will have to use Task Scheduler for this. See https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... b330ed5d2d

Thank you.

[hlewton]

I hope it's appropriate to post this question here since it does have to do with Windows Defender and how it protects my machine.

I have just read a little about Windows Defender's Ransomware Protection. In checking, I found it was not enabled. It was so easy to enable I am wondering why it wasn't enabled as a default. I am not sure if enabling it has disadvantages or not. My thought is, it should have been enabled as a default and I don't know why it wasn't.

Some thoughts, please. Should it be enabled or not?

[HansV]

Controlled Folder Access (Ransomware Protection) can be useful, although it is does not offer 100% protection. If a malicious website or app tricks you into giving it sufficient privileges, it can bypass Controlled Folder Access.
And it is rather annoying when you first enable it - it will block lots of ordinary things that you do such as saving a file; you then have to go into the settings and specify that you want to allow it...

[hlewton]

Thank you for that answer. Glad I only experimented with it on one machine. I think it blocked the email alerting me to a reply here because I didn't get one.

[JoeP]

Controlled folder access prevents unknown programs from writing to folders. Here's a Microsoft article on it - Protect important folders with controlled folder access. You'll notice that many trusted programs are automatically added to the OK list. Adding programs to the OK list should be a one-time effort.

I guess that Microsoft did not enable this by default because they feared a deluge of complaints about the whitelist process.

Note that if you use OneDrive ransomware protection is included for OneDrive files. See Ransomware detection and recovering your files.

[hlewton]

Thank you Joe for that information. I will check out those links.