When and How to Run Windows Defender Offline Scan Windows 10? [MiniTool Tips]

When Do You Need to Windows Defender Offline Scan?

Windows security is a hot issue among computer users. The Windows Defender is a good and built-in antivirus program of Windows. Windows Defender provides 4 scanning types including the Quick scan, Full scan, Custom scan and Windows Defender Offline scan.

You may wonder when you need the Windows Defender Offline scan.

If your computer is affected persistently by a virus such as the rootkits, you may need to use the Windows Defender Offline scan feature because this feature can run when Windows is not started and thus the malware is not active and blocking security software.

Meanwhile, how to run Windows Defender Offline scan? In the following section, we will demonstrate how to perform Windows 10 Defender Offline scan.

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How to Run Windows Defender Offline Scan?

In this section, we will show you the detailed steps to run Windows Defender Offline scan.

Step 1: Press Windows key and I key together to open Settings. Then choose Update & Security to continue.

Step 2: In the pop-up window, choose Windows Defender in the left panel and click on Turn on Windows Defender antivirus to continue.

Step 3: Next, click Virus & threat protection to continue.

Step 4: In the pop-up window, choose Advanced scan to continue.

Step 5: Next, select the option Windows Defender Offline scan.

Step 7: At last, click Scan now to continue. Then Windows Defender will remind you to save your working before starting the scanning process.

After that, your computer will begin to restart and it will enter the Windows Recovery Environment where the Windows Defender will begin to scan your computer. Then the whole process will take about 15 minutes.

After the scanning is finished, you can open Windows Security again to check the scanning result. Open Virus & threat protection again and click Scan history to check the scanning result.

Useful Suggestion

Although the Windows Defender is a very good tool to safeguard your PC and files, it also may encounter some other problems such as the Windows Defender error 0x800704ec when running it.

Therefore, in order to provide better protection for the computer and operating system, it is recommended to create a system image when the computer is in a normal state. With the system image, you can restore the computer to a previous state when it encounters some errors.

So, the professional Windows backup software – MiniTool ShadowMaker is strongly recommended. It is an efficient and comprehensive tool to create a system image.

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Now, here is the tutorial.

Step 1: Install MiniTool ShadowMaker on your computer, launch it, click Keep Trial, and click Connect in This Computer to continue.

Step 2: MiniTool ShadowMaker is designed to back up the operating system. It selects the OS as backup source by default. You can click Destination module to choose a backup destination.

Step 3: After selecting the backup source and destination, click Back up Now to start the backup task.

When all steps are finished, you have finished the system backup, thus providing better protection for your computer and files.

Related article: How to Back up Windows to Safeguard Your Computer? Try MiniTool!

Final Words

To sum up, this post has shown when you need to perform Windows Defender Offline scan and how to enable it. In addition, it is suggested that you should create a system image so as to provide better protection for your data.