Windows 10 now lets you manually scan files with Windows Defender

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Most of the Windows users usually install a third party antivirus solution on their system which helps them to protect against the various malware that ravages the network every day. Microsoft, with the new Windows 10, wanted to take the opportunity to improve its security software, known as Windows Defender , and distribute its operating system with its own antivirus installed and enabled by default which, while leaving a little to be desired, provides a basic layer of security for less expert users.

This simple security software is activated automatically when the operating system is installed and begins to protect users from network threats, but in the first compilation of Windows, the antivirus was running in the background, which was quite complicated for the users. Users who, for example, wanted to perform manual disk and folder scans.

Microsoft released the major update to Windows 10 November 2015 which, among other things, has added many functions to the operating system, most of them requested by the users themselves, among which it is worth highlighting better integration with their security suite.

Now, users can rely on Windows Update as if it were a conventional security suite, being able to more easily control its behavior and, most importantly, be able to run on-demand scans of files and folders.

To do this, just right click on the drive, file or folder to scan and we will see a new entry titled " Scan with Windows Defender ... «.

Click on it and Windows will automatically open the main window of the security tool and start scanning all selected files one by one.

Once completed, we can check the results to see if we are truly protected or, if not, some files might contain malware.

Windows Defender on-demand scans were previously available, but not enabled

Since Windows 8 and 8.1, Windows Defender allows on-demand scanning of custom files and folders, however, in order to be able to use this feature we had to enable the option manually by changing a specific registry key so that said entry appears in the context menu, probably because it is still in development.

Finally, with the new version of Windows 10 November 2015 , Microsoft has decided to make this feature available to all users who may choose to rely on Microsoft's scanning engine to protect against malware in the same way as with other security suites. similar third parties such as as ESET , Kaspersky ou Avast !, among others.

Are you a Windows 10 user? Confide the safety of your Windows Defender computer ?