Windows Defender Offline — old name, new use

[kashken]

In my earlier post, I was having problems getting my Win7 64 bit laptop to boot from the CD. That is now corrected, and it is scanning (at 2 hours 20 minutes and 946,000 files). The 64 bit version of the scan is running.

[Deadeye81]

I have an old Micron Millennia upgraded with a Celeron 1.4 ghz CPU (384 meg memory). WDO will not run on this configuration. WDO on CD boots into Win7 and likely does not support this CPU configuration or some part of the motherboard or disk configuration.

The error dialog that comes up is BLANK (no title, no text, blank button name). Click on close (X) and another dialog flashes a message for perhaps 1/2 second and WDO quits. Click on the blank button and it quits immediately (both situations go back to re-boot).

The OS to be scanned is XP SP3 fully up to date.

WDO requires a minimum of 768 MB RAM to run successfully on XP.

[andyprice]

" WDO requires a minimum of 768 MB RAM to run successfully on XP. "

It appeared to run fine in 512 MB on my P3, it just didn't find any malware! Perhaps it wasn't really scanning after all. I also found that the quick and full scans didn't scan anything and I had to do a custom scan and select the hard drive myself.

Andy

[hammondmike]

Downloaded 32 and 64 bit files. Burned both successfully. Ran 64 version first with the following results:
1. No choice of OS was given. WIN7 64 started and ran WDO 64 to the point where Window Shell Application.exe encountered a major error. The only recourse was a restart.
2. Attempting to chose either OS without first running the WDO disk resulted in the selected OS starting without running the WDO disk.

MS WDO FAQs does not cover this problem. The MSE Forum does not have anyone who has encountered this problem, yet. The FAQs seem to indicate that only a USB drive can be updated. Apparently, once you create a CD, you have a coaster after the definitions become outdated.

If anyone knows how to select an OS from multiple boot systems and then getting the WDO disk to work, I would appreciate hearing about it. WDO seems to be a good idea, but trying to get it to work from other than a USB drive seems impossible. I wonder how Woody was able to do it???

[Deadeye81]

Hello Mike,

Try running the Custom scan. It is supposed to allow you to choose disks and folders for scanning.

[SalisburySenior]

I ran Windows Defender on a XP machine. It found 17 serious threats. I pressed the button to remove the threats and the progress bar got about halfway complete and then locked up. Now what?

[tpaparsons]

Thanks !

The hard drive is in a business class laptop, the HP EliteBook 8740w, which includes the option to encrypt the hard disk with what HP calls HP ProtectTools Drive Encryption. I've searched with Google to try to discover the brand of the encryption software (without success), but it may very well be HP's own software creation, since HP owns at least one patent on drive encryption for their larger computers. I've checked the MS Answers thread, but it sheds no further light.

Anyone out there know what brand/type encryption HP is using on this laptop ?

[rods]

Hi Woody et al.,
Yesterday having read you article I downloaded and ran the .exe for the Windows Defender Offline Wizard Package (!) 32 bit and created an iso which I have stored on my Win7Pro machine and (as far as I can remember) made no other changes to my machine. This morning when logging on to my domain I seem to have had my domain authentication lost and File and Printer Sharing settings reset. I'm just going through a process of elimination to discover the cause of these changes - as an aging IT tech, I get suspicious of autonomous change!?
Anyone else experience similar issues after running the wicked wizard?

[Tracker]

I found a quirk, at least for my motherboard (AMD CPU) and possibly others - the WDO boot CD stalled at the initial MS logo screen, and after a long delay popped up an error message saying there was a memory management problem. As I had all 3 RAM slots filled (3 GB), on a guess I pulled one and found that the WDO CD would then boot and run the malware scan program successfully. I don't know why that should be, as XP runs fine with the 3 GB.

[KevinChambers]

I haven't tried the tool yet, but it won't improve on the procedure of pulling the drive and attaching it to another system unless it can also do boot sector repair and replace infected system files. I use an OS CD/DVD to re-write the boot sector, and I keep an extra supply of XP's svchost.exe, explorer.exe, cdrom.sys, ntfs.sys, and several others. I haven't found an offline tool yet that can do it all, would be nice.

[Super Sarge]

I Made a boot disc, booted ran it on My W7 64 bit machine ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 with 12 gig of Triple channel memory with no problems. I just ran (custom) it on the C drive it took just over an hour. I did not do a full scan as I have 4 internal drives, and 6 external drives

I highly doubt storing an ISO on your machine would create a problem

[Dave-D]

This kinda stinks.

I can boot up WD offline just fine, and it runs
Windows. In fact, it looks very like a Windows
PE package. But that's the end of the line for me.

My PC uses a high-end ASUS motherboard with
a Marvell [RAID0] embedded controller. This
package can't find a 'hard drive' (array), so
it summarily exits.

I have two gripes: one is that MS seems to
accommodate only the 'bare-bones' kind of
system. Even when installing Windows, the
escape process to install custom drivers is
antiquated and cumbersome. Here, it doesn't
even exist--so I can never run this app.

[BTW: the MS site doesn't even cover this.]

The other is really a side-issue to this: MS
makes WindowsPE and derivative products
only available to system builders. They have
steadfastly refused to release anything like
a full rescue disk; when Windows fails due
to hard drive issues, you're in a heap of woe.

I pop in any number of Linux-based repair
boot CDs and they find Dell or Marvell disk
arrays immediately--drivers are included.
But of course they are relatively clumsy
when it comes to repairing NTFS and subtle
Windows boot errors.

Microsoft needs to make repair and recovery
tools far more available and accessible; in
my opinion they have always shortchanged us. Dave

[Super Sarge]

what part of Beta is that hard to understand?



NOTE: Let's keep things civil; cut what can be taken as sarcasm toward other Loungers. Check the Forum Rules under FAQ.
We do not want to see any escalation here.

Deadeye81

[rgk]

Yesterday, I downloaded Windows Defender Offline beta and made a CD. Windows XP sp-3 updated. Taking over 5 hours, it picked up 5 problems. I clicked on System Cleanup. It took about 1 minute for the progress bar to move about ¾ of the way and then it just stayed on one spot. That was over 3 hours ago. It is an older PC. It did the same thing last night. The online FAQ mentioned downloading and burning on a different PC, so I did. Put the CD in and now that's where I'm at. I let it sit and switched my monitor to this even older PC. I have MS, so I have a slight vision problem and problems with movement in my right hand, so my typing is slow.

Since it is an offline program, I can't take a screen shot, but I did take a digital photo of the screens, showing the names of the items it was supposed to remove by doing the system cleanup.
4 of the 5 are Trojans or Trojan Dropper and use the hidden entry tied to “Ofida” plus additional characters , the 5^th is called a “Vr Tool” . They all hide in Win32. Microsoft Security Essentials and their online Safety Scanner DO NOT find them...... How do I get rid of them?
Don't bother trying to contact MS via one of their forums on this topic, unless you have a windows live email address, they won't let you even log in. Even their live chat uses an automated function... no real live chat, just a stupid system, trying to read your thoughts.

[kashken]

I have successfully used both a 32 bit CD and 64 bit CD to run WDO against 4 different installs, 2 of XP SP3, 1 of 32 bit Win7 and 1 of 64 bit Win7.

The only one that failed was on a system running XP SP3 but with only 384 meg of memory. Since WDO boots into Win7 and runs as a Win7 process, it apparently needs something on the order of Win7 memory in order to get the job done. However, it should NOT fail with a blank titled dialog with blank content in the dialog window and a button with a blank label. And, any failure should indicate the problem encountered (while that blank dialog may be attempting to do that, it turns into a double failure which is even worse).

I have used scanners from other vendors against the system that failed and those runs were successful, so WDO has some work to do to achieve that same level of success.

Everybody's input is appreciated. Lets hope Microsoft thinks likewise.