How to enable Network scanning in Windows Defender on Windows 10
If your Windows Defender displays an error message saying: “Items Ignored During Analysis the reason may be that you added an exclusion to your scan settings or if network scanning is disabled on your system. If you are experiencing this issue, you may need to enable network scanning in Windows Defender on Windows 10 to resolve the issue.
The error message appears during the quick and complete analyzes.
Enable network scanning in Windows Defender
There are three ways to disable or enable network scanning in Windows Defender on Windows 10. Each of these will enable network scanning.
- PowerShell method
- Group policy method
- Registry Editor Method
Depending on the version of Windows and your privileges, you can choose one of them.
1]PowerShell method
Launch PowerShell with administrator privileges
Type and execute the command:
Set-MpPreference –DisableScanningNetworkFiles 0
There is no output for this command, so you will need to copy a file from the network and see if you still receive the error.
If you want to disable it, set it to 1.
2]Group policy method
Open the Group Policy Editor and navigate to:
Computer Configuration> Administrative Templates> Windows Components> Windows Defender Antivirus> Analysis.
Double click Analyze network files and set the option to Activated. Then click OK.
Once the setting is enabled, all network files will be scanned.
The default setting is not to scan any of the network files.
3]Registry Editor Method
If you are using Windows Home, you can try to modify the registry values because Group Policies are not available to you.
Open the Registry Editor and go to:
ComputerHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindows Defender
Right click on Windows Defender and create a key (folder) with the name Analysis
Under scan, create a new DWORD with the name DisableScanningNetworkFiles
Set the DWORD value to 0 to activate scanning.
Close the registry the next time you copy a file from the network; it will be scanned.
You can copy the key and import it to another computer to apply it instantly.
I hope the message was easy to follow and can now scan network files.
POINT: You can also have Windows Defender scan network drives mapped to Windows 10.