Windows 10 has now completely changed the way we use Windows Defender. The new built-in Windows Defender is way better and even looks surprisingly well. The all new Windows Defender Security Center is a hub to all your computer’s security settings.
Yesterday, the Defender on my computer marked some files as virus and deleted them. I wanted to remove those files from the Quarantine, so I looked around and surprisingly I was not able to find it. But playing around with it for some time got me to the ‘Quarantine’ and some other settings. So here is a short post demonstrating how you can remove your files from Quarantine in Windows Defender Security Center on Windows 10.
Remove or Restore files from Quarantine in Windows Defender
1: Open Windows Defender Security Center from the system tray area.
2: Once opened, click on the first menu option that says “Virus & threat protection”.
3: Now look for ‘Scan History’ just below the title and description.
4: Once you are inside ‘Scan History’, look for ‘Quarantined Items’ and then click on ‘See Full History’ to view all the quarantined items.
5: You can easily remove quarantined items by hitting the Remove button. Otherwise, you can restore them back by clicking on the Restore button.
So that was pretty simple. While you can remove files and programs from the ‘Quarantined’ section, you can also add them to the ‘Allowed Threats’ as well. There might be some programs or files you trust but Windows Defender keeps marking them as threats. So, any of such files can be moved to this section and these files will never be deleted again. Remember if you’ve restored a file and not added it to ‘Allowed Threats’ or ‘Exclusions’, the file may get quarantined again. Dealing with infected files can be risky. Please proceed at your own risk and make sure you can verify the publisher of the file and you trust it.
There is also something called ‘Exclusions’ in Windows Defender. Exclusions are nothing but a list of files that you want not to be scanned. Files marked as exclusions will be skipped while performing a virus scan by Windows Defender. To add an exclusion, follow these steps:
Add Exclusions in Windows Defender Security Center
1: Open Windows Defender Security Center from the system tray area.
2: Click on ‘Virus & threat protection’.
3: Now open, ‘Virus and threat protection settings’.
4: Scroll to the bottom and find ‘Exclusions’. Click on ‘Add or remove exclusions’.
5: Now hit the Plus button and choose they type of exclusion you want to add. I am adding a file exclusion for reference.
You can add a file, folder, File type, or Process to the Exclusions list.
Exclusions can be removed easily as well. All you need to do is click the relevant down arrow and hit the ‘Remove’ button.
So, this was all about quarantined and excluded files on new Windows Defender. All these steps apply to Windows Defender Security Center introduced in Windows 10 Creators Update v1703 and later.
This post shows how you can harden Windows Defender protection to the highest levels on Windows 10 by changing a few Group Policy settings.
