Registry scan find issue with windows defender

CCleaner for Windows
1

Hi. I just clean reinstalled Windows 8.1 after getting sick of Windows 10 breaking everything after a feature update. Everything is great - system is fine.

There is one issue that comes up when i do a registry scan with Ccleaner. It finds this:

Missing Startup Software "%ProgramFiles%\Windows Defender\MSASCuiL.exe" HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

If i delete/fix the entry using Ccleaner, and restart and do a reg scan again, the issue comes back

If seems to refer to Windows defender. If I look in my startup (through task manager), it shows the entry Masacuil. If i do the scan and delete it, this masacuil entry will disappear but then come back on a restart (and show again in Ccleaner).

Can i fix this? I seem to recall it usually shows Windows defender (not msascuil) when I look at the startup entries in task manager.

Windows defender works fine otherwise - no issues.

Thanks for any help.

2

It's the Win Defender notification icon.

I wouldn't clean it, perhaps right-click on the entry and select to exclude it.

3

Okay.. one question. Do you know why it is showing this missing startup entry?

If I look in Ccleaners startup, it shows the windows defender entry:

Yes HKLM:Run WindowsDefender "%ProgramFiles%\Windows Defender\MSASCuiL.exe"

I guess i just want to make sure it is actually running since ccleaner is stating it is missing as a startup entry after a reg scan.

4

Anyway, I excluded it and it seems to be working fine - thanks.

5

Looks like this might be some kind of bug/issue with Windows 8.1. I found this here. I asked a question there about it:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/7471ef35-4453-4cf5-9c94-857ece5772e3/feedback-some-problembug-in-windows-defender-410209-client?referrer=http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/7471ef35-4453-4cf5-9c94-857ece5772e3/feedback-some-problembug-in-windows-defender-410209-client?referrer=http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/7471ef35-4453-4cf5-9c94-857ece5772e3/feedback-some-problembug-in-windows-defender-410209-client?forum=w8itprosecurity

6

Since it keeps coming back after rebooting I'd just right click it and exclude it. Multiple antivirus' have what seem to be invalid keys to registery cleaners, but the antivirus will often just re-enable the keys if they're removed.

I'm personally in the camp of not letting registry cleaners touch my installed antivirus, so if something is detected as invalid I just exclude it as leaving it alone will break nothing.

7

Yup, that is what I'm going to do. Just has me curious since this is Windows defender we are talking about. It's not some fly by night AV. It's what pretty much most people are using especially w/Win 8.1 so I wonder why it is behaving this way. But yes, for now, I will exclude it. Thanks.

8

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. But what I've found over the years with using registry cleaners is that they get confused with things such as the quotes around the entry among other things.

I just normally check my system for the alleged orphan files, and if I am sure its safe, I exclude it from further checking. In the past I tried to correct the entry, such as removing the quotes

but it seems to break the associated program.

9

The quotes around the path in the registry shouldn't really confuse a well written registry cleaner since the quotes are required by Windows itself for files and paths that have spaces in the naming. What confuses registry cleaners are often cryptic looking settings in the registry that have other data tagged onto them, or weird symbols.