If you're having difficulties removing malware with these products, you can refer to our help on removing difficult threats.

These antimalware products also provide powerful malware removal capabilities. For real-time protection with automatic updates, use Microsoft Defender Antivirus on Windows 11, Windows 10, and Windows 8 or Microsoft Security Essentials on Windows 7. This tool doesn't replace your antimalware product. Safety Scanner is a portable executable and doesn't appear in the Windows Start menu or as an icon on the desktop.

We recommend that you always download the latest version of this tool before each scan. To rerun a scan with the latest anti-malware definitions, download and run Safety Scanner again. Safety Scanner expires 10 days after being downloaded. Microsoft Safety Scanner only scans when manually triggered. The security intelligence update version of the Microsoft Safety Scanner matches the version described in this web page. To learn more, see 2019 SHA-2 Code Signing Support requirement for Windows and WSUS. Your devices must be updated to support SHA-2 in order to run Safety Scanner. Safety Scanner is exclusively SHA-2 signed.

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