Windows Defender & Quarantined Viruses?

[Guest]

Windows Defender did a few automatic scans and found a few viruses that
weren't being picked up before. After I looked closely though, the program
actually found viruses that had been Quarantined by Norton Antivirus, which
obviously pose no risk at this time.

Why is this happening and how can I get it to overlook these files?

 

[Andre Da Costa]

Windows Defender is not a AntiVirus Utility, you still need a dedicated
AntiVirus utility such as Norton, McAfee, AVG or Avast.
--
Andre
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
FAQ for MS AntiSpy http://www.geocities.com/marfer_mvp/FAQ_MSantispy.htm

 

[Guest]

What? I know that... that wasn't my question.

What I meant was that the items the Windows Defender scan said were risks
were actually viruses that were quarantened by Norton Antivirus, items that
are no longer live virues and pose no risks. I wanted to know why Windows
Defender picked up these items.

 

[Guest]

IMO it picks them up because Norton has not deleted them. Why do you want to
keep them?

 

[Guest]

I don't want to keep them, I just found it unusual that Windows Defender
would find items that had already been taken care of by another program's
scan. Anyway, I just cleaned out my Quarantine folder, which had hundreds of
items... I never thought to do that before. Does everyone do this on a
regular basis or do you all just keep the items there after they're found?

 

[Guest]

I try to research what has been quarantined to make sure it is not a false
positive. I do not want to delete part of a needed program or part of Windows
due to program error. If my research proves a virus or spyware is real, I
kill/delete/destroy any way I can. If I'm not sure, I leave it quarantined
for indefinite period to make sure my PC and all programs are still
functioning properly after the quarantine. Every anti-spyware program I have
has reported false positives that were harmless parts of programs. I always
assume there's a possibility for error. A lot depends on the severity of the
risk involved by the quarantined item.

 

[Bill Sanderson]

I clean out quarantine's regularly. They are somewhat anachronistic. Most
viruses these days are trojans, and they are pure in the sense that whatever
is carrying the virus is pure malware--it isn't an innocent bit of data or
code that has become infected and can be cleaned leaving something useful
behind. The premise behind a quarantine is to preserve data or code in the
hope that it can be cleaned by a later definition set and preserved. I
haven't found anything worth preserving in a quarantine in years.

There is an exclusion in tools, general settings, scroll down to Advanced
Options. I think you should be able to exclude your quarantine there.

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[Bill Sanderson]

Thanks - that is the other reason to both use quarantine and research the
content--false positives can be devastating if they involve a valuable app.

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