Bug Report

[LuDean Marvin]

The icon in the system tray had a small blob on it indicating that some kind
of attention was needed, so I clicked on the icon to see what it was.

When the window popped up, it indicated that "You haven't scanned your
computer in 3 days. We recommend that you schedule Windows Defender to scan
your computer each day." There was a "Start Scan" button displayed.

I clicked the "start scan" button and received the following error in a
popup labled "Windows Defender":

Windows Defender encountered an error: 0x800040003. Invalid pointer

An "Ok" button was displayed. I clicked on the button, which closed the
error window and left the "Start Scan" button grayed out.

I closed the Windows Defender window and then attempted to retrace the steps
which caused the error. From the point that I saw the blob on the system
tray icon, the same steps produced the same results.

Once I repeated the steps and got the same results, I tried scanning using
the scan button on the toobar instead. Windows Defender then scanned my
system without further incident.

 

[Dave M]

Possibly a difference between the Quick Scan which only scans certain
locations commonly populated by spyware and a Full Scan which examines
every file on your system. The Msft recommended scheduled scan is the
Quick Scan. You very possibly have a trace of old malware resident in
either System Restore, a Compressed File (as in zipped), or a Quarantined
file from Defender or another scanner. None of these is cleanable using
Windows Defender, but all are manually cleanable/removable.

You can look at the system event log to see exactly where the file/s that
gave you the 80004003 error code is located (as documented repeatedly in
this forum) and make that decision.

 

[Guest]

The problem was not with something the scan found, it was with starting the
scan. That silly scan button has never worked and is a known bug. Just use
the scan option on the toolbar to chose quick,full, or custom scan and all
will be well.