How to use Windows Defender Offline on #Windows 10 PC?

Sometime it happens when malicious and potentially unwanted software including rootkits, installs themselves on your PC and make it difficult to remove even with an up-to-date antivirus program. Windows Defender Offline handles it by booting itself without loading the actual Windows OS.

Earlier, we had to manually install the Windows Defender Offline as a separate executable, but now with Anniversary Update of Windows 10 it will be quite easy. Let’s check what’s coming up next!

Malicious software’s are always harmful, which installs virus, malware or trojans to your PC and effects other systems within the LAN, including your running system. This happens when you connect to the Internet or install some programs from a CD, DVD, USB or other media. Once it’s on your PC, this software either runs immediately, or runs at an unexpected time. Up-to-date antivirus programs sometime feels it difficult to remove it from the running system.

Windows Defender Offline scan then comes into picture, which when installed, boots directly to the program and does a quick scan to clean it. The program is currently available as a separate package and can be downloaded from Microsoft server.

See more:   A Collection of Windows 10 Tips & Tricks Series 

Along with Windows 10 Anniversary, which is expected to release this summer, is going to bring this directly integrated in your Windows 10 operating system. No separate download will be needed and directly from the Windows Defender settings you will be able to boot into offline scan and check your system.

If you are a Windows Insider and currently running under fast ring of users and have installed the latest bits, will get this bundled into your operating system itself.

To run it, open your Windows 10 Settings app and navigate to “Update & security” page as shown in the above screenshot. Now from the left side navigation panel, click on the item that says “Windows Defender”. Scroll to the bottom of the screen. Here you will find a section called “Windows Defender Offline” and a button labeled “Scan Offline”. Click on this button to boot your system directly to Windows Defender Offline and automatically do a quick system scan.

Please do remember that, clicking on this “Scan Offline” button will restart your system. Before clicking on this, save all your tasks, documents.

Once the scan completes (takes around 5-15 mints, based on the system files), it will restart the system and boot into your Windows 10 desktop. In case you want to stop the scan and boot into desktop, you can click on the “Cancel scan” anytime.

I hope that the post was helpful and will help you to scan your system in OS offline mode and delete all undeletable viruses, malwares etc. from your system. Checkout my other posts on Windows 10 Tips & Tricks series which is available in this location: win10tips.kunal-chowdhury.com. All the latest posts are available at the end of the page, sorted by build no. of the Windows 10 updates released so far. If you have any questions or suggestions, do drop a line below or contact me over Twitter.