Microsoft Security Essentials continuously needing a scan problem

[bernard]

I'm running Win 7 HP 64 bit with all the latest fixes and security updates. Since I downloaded the latest version of CCleaner I've had a problem with MSE. Despite having immediately run a scan the icon for MSE turns orange and says my PC is "potentially unprotected" and needs a scan! When this first started (a few days ago) I initially turner off any cleaning of Windows Dewfender, although defender does not run on Win 7 and later I stopped CCleaner starting at boot time and I did not start it subsequently. However no matter how many times I rebooted the system and told MSE to do a scan it would do the scan and then tell me I needed to do a scan!

 

Searching the web one comes across a lot of people who believe the solution to all problems is to remove CCleaner and I was initially reluvtant to do this since I have run it successfully for many years.

 

However the only way I could fix this problem was to uninstall CCleaner and then the problem immediately went away. Worryingly it looks like there is something that continues to run once CCleaner has been run until such time as it is uninstalled from the system. Any thoughts from anyone as to what could be happening here, or is it a genuine bug?

[Andavari]

You could make an Exclude in CCleaner (Options > Exclude) so that it won't clean MSE log files by excluding the folder where they're stored. They should be in one of the User Profile Application Data folders.

[nukecad]

In Win7 'Windows Defender' is only an anti-spyware programme, which is why you have MSE as well.

From Win8 onward 'Windows Defender' became a full anti-virus programme, so you don't need the separate MSE.
(But they kept the 'Windows Defender' name rather than MSE which can cause a bit of confusion).

As Andavari says you need to make MSE an exception so that CC doesn't clean it's logfiles.

What is happening at the moment is that you are cleaning out the file that tells MSE when it last did a scan.
As it can't find this information it keeps thinking it has never done a scan and so tells you it needs to do one.

I had a similar thing after updating to Win10, with Defender always wanting to do a scan.

I just unticked Defender in the 'applications' list so that it's log doesn't get cleared and the problem went away.

[Nergal]

 

I had a similar thing after updating to Win10, with Defender always wanting to do a scan.I just unticked Defender in the 'applications' list so that it's log doesn't get cleared and the problem went away.

Very likely this is the solution

[Andavari]

Maybe a solution to untick it, but people have stated on the forum in the past unticking it didn't solve their issue, hence the reason I eluded to making an exclusion.