Microsoft Defender Antivirus scans when the Laptop is Off?

I get a pop-up box on the bottom left that say's: Microsoft Defender has scanned your computer six times and found No Threats. The laptop is Off

Anyway to make an adjustment on the scanning feature? I do a manual scan before I shut down. 23H2 thank for any comments. I have Malwearbytes inside. Which I also scan before I shut down. Thanks for any comments 23H2 (OS 22631.4541)

Mine does that too. My guess is that it means Defender does x number of scans while the PC is on and is just alerting you upon next boot up.

thanks for the reply, I thought we could control the scans? regards

remover said:

The laptop is Off

Click to expand...

The laptop IS off, or the laptop WAS off when the Defender scan is/was done???

Windows defender does an automatic quick scan every once in a while. The support post here says:

Microsoft Defender Antivirus regularly scans your device to help keep it safe. We try to do this while you’re not using your device so it doesn’t interfere with your work.

Click to expand...

If you look at the schedule (also mentioned in the above link) that you can set to schedule your own quick scan, you can also see that it gets run approximately once a day regardless if you have configured a trigger for that schedule or not.

I don't know the rhythm of the notifications, even though I do get it every once in a while, as it pops up very irregularly.

Another behavior I have noticed is that, on my regularly used computer, I never get prompted to do a quick scan, but on a computer that is very irregularly turned on, I do get prompted to initiate a quick scan. I suspect because of the "forced" scheduled quick scan above on the regularly used computer.

I think all in all, MS does whatever it thinks would be safer for the mass. Being able to control exactly how Windows Defender works may not be its strong suit.

"rhythm of the notifications" well put. Someone else said its a ghost image Will just keep an eye it for now. It runs great when I do a manual scan (quick or Full) & I do that after I clean up the system. Thank you all for the replies!

idgat said:

The laptop IS off, or the laptop WAS off when the Defender scan is/was done???

Click to expand...

No I do manual scans before I shut down. The results are fast .. zero threats. thanks