Knowledge Base

Microsoft Defender: Running a Virus Scan Locally (Windows)


Occasionally, we may see malware being present on a system we monitor.

If you are asked to scan a Windows system for malware, you can easily do this using Microsoft Defender.

  1. Open the Start menu and select the search field; you can type “Windows Security” or select the option on the menu. Click on the “Windows Security” app icon that pops up.

  2. image-20230825-072916.png

    Then select “Virus & Threat protection.”

    image-20230825-072943.png
  3. Select the “Scan options” text under the “Quick scan” button, as we would like to do a thorough scan of the system and click the “Scan now” button.

    image-20230825-072956.png
  4. Once the scan is finished, the summary will update if there are no threats; if there are threats, Windows Defender will notify you of them. If this happens, please inform your incident response team and notify us at Quantum immediately.