Security Essentials and Windows Defender Problem in Win7/8/8.1

Security Essentials and Windows Defender Problem

It is reported that a number of Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 users are experiencing some problems with Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) and Windows Defender Antivirus. These users find their real-time protection turned off without their knowledge and virus definitions are out-of-date.

Besides, when manually running Security Essentials or Windows Defender scan on a computer running Windows 7, 8 or 8.1, the antimalware solutions are crashing randomly with an error message informing them PC couldn’t be scanned and Windows suggests restarting the computer to start antivirus service, and shows the error code 0x800106ba.

The problem is happening with some users, but not all. For Windows 10 users, they seem to not be affected.

Compared to Windows Defender, Microsoft Security Essentials offers a fuller range of protection against malicious software since it can prevent PC from viruses, worms, spyware, Trojans, rootkits, and more.

Now we don’t know how many users are affected by this problem but have seen early reports of this on AskWoody website. Besides, there are more reports of the same problem on Microsoft Social Technet forum and Reddit forum. Even some System Center Endpoint Protection users are also reporting this issue and have been guessing that a faulty virus definition could be the factor.

Actually, the error seems to stem from a buggy 1.289.1521.0 definition update issued on March 19.2019 for Microsoft antimalware solutions. A Windows insider has confirmed the issue on his virtual machines that all Windows 7/8/8.1 operating systems updated to the definition version running full scan are affected but other machines that haven’t upgraded to the latest version can perform the full scan without any issue.

Besides, when reading comments posted on social media and support forum Windows 7, Windows 8 and 8.1 systems running Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows Defender with the latest definition version are affected.

While seeing the generated log in the event that the malware service crashes, “The handle is invalid” is as the error description and “the filter was unloaded unexpectedly” is as the reason behind it.

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How to Fix Security Essentials and Windows Defender 0x800106ba Error Code

According to users, uninstalling and reinstalling MSE hasn’t fixed the issue. A possible workaround for the issue would be to rollback the installed signature definition to the previous version by using the following commands via Command Prompt:

• cd \
• cd C:\program files\Microsoft Security Client\
• Mpcmdrun -RemoveDefinitions

Also, disable updates to block the faulty on from being applied again.

Fortunately, currently a Microsoft spokesperson has said via an emailed statement that they have resolved Security Essentials and Windows Defender problem but the fix appears to have been limited to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. And he hasn’t mentioned the updated definition that is now available, but here is information on 1.289.1599.0 that is issued by Microsoft on March 19.

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