If you are depending on Windows Defender to protect your Windows 10 PC and are having issues while performing a full antivirus scan, you are not alone. It seems like the latest Windows Defender Update isn’t playing nice with its scanning function, causing Microsoft’s default antivirus to crash in the middle of a scan.
According to a report on AskWoody (via Bleeping Computer), a number of Windows 10 users have taken to Microsoft’s Community forum to claim that the recent definition update, which was released earlier today, is causing the scan to abruptly stop with a “Threat service has stopped. Restart now’ error message, or “Unexpected error. Sorry, we ran into a problem. Please try again” notification.
The report suggests that the issue doesn’t seem to affect a Quick Scan, tough, but some Windows 10 PCs ultimately hang after performing a Full Scan on a specific number of files. In particular, the issue seems to be caused by the crashing of Windows Defender Antivirus Service service, with the Event Viewer’s Application view indicating it as an APPCRASH.
Moreover, the Windows Defender Antivirus Service terminates unexpectedly with the following message:
The Windows Defender Antivirus Service service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 100 milliseconds: Run the configured recovery program.
According to Bleeping Computer, Windows 10 users can get rid of the problem by heading over to the Service Manager >> Start the Windows Defender Antivirus Service (which was already terminated by your system), to stop these errors.
It is worth noting that the problem seems to affect just a subset of the Windows 10 community, as some people reportedly managed to run a Full Scan without any problem. As of now, there is no official acknowledgement from Microsoft and you may need to wait a couple of days to receive a patch.
Did you encounter issues while performing a Full Scan with the recent Windows Defender Update? Let us know in the comments section below.
