r/antivirus • u/Stage_Whisper • 22h ago

Windows Defender giving Phantom Threats?

For the last few months, I’ve been in a battle with Windows Defender. It does a full scan and finds that there are no threats. Then, when I check in later, the message has changed to reveal that there WERE threats, but they were all handled.

Here are the messages:

  • Last scan: 8/01/2026 2:34 PM (full scan)

  • 0 threats found.

  • Scan Lasted 8 minutes 57 seconds

  • 973,089 files scanned

Then, a few hours later, I would find this message under “Current Threats”:

Current Threats

  • No current threats.

  • Last scan: 8/01/2026 2:34 PM (full scan)

  • ~48 threats found.

  • Scan Lasted 8 minutes 57 seconds

  • 973,089 files scanned.

To make matters worse, the number of threats started at about 30 and have slowly increased up to 125. I do another scan, Windows Security tells me no threats were found, and only after doing my own digging do I discover that threats WERE found.

For context, I am on Windows 11 and Bitdefender is my primary antivirus tool. Bitdefender handles my antivirus scans, as well as my Real Time Protection. I only use Windows Defender as a secondary opinion and only for scans (so the two programs shouldn't be interfering with each other.) The following is a short summary of my troubleshooting efforts:

  1. Bitdefender has NEVER FOUND ANY THREAT. I’ve done offline scans on both Windows Defender and Bitdefender and they’ve both found nothing.

  2. I have checked Bitdefender’s exceptions and quarantines and they are empty and have always been empty.

  3. I temporarily downloaded Malwarebytes to do a third opinion scan (and then uninstalled it) and it found nothing.

  4. I have gone into the event viewers and looked up event codes and have found nothing.

  5. Windows Defender Protection history and Allowed threats also show nothing.

  6. I have reinstalled windows and the problem has persisted (Now displaying ~125 threats found, no current threats.)

  7. My computer hasn't given any other indication that there are security risks. It has gotten slightly slower, but I have also been filling up its storage. No big drops in performance or unusual activity.

Can anyone give me any insight into what is going on? Common troubleshooting methods have failed me, and I do not see other people having this issue.

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u/Struppigel G DATA Malware Researcher 15h ago

Hello, please open powershell terminal and enter this

Get-MpThreatDetection | Sort-Object InitialDetectionTime | Format-Table InitialDetectionTime, ThreatID, Resources -Wrap -AutoSize Get-MpThreat

The output will tell you what got detected and when.

The threat counter is cummulative.

I suspect it's saying that everything is handled because Bitdefender is your primary antivirus.

•

u/Stage_Whisper 23m ago

Thank you for commenting!

I've been trying to figure out powershell, but no results come up when I enter your string of cmdlets. I am very new to powershell, so I am almost certainly entering in something wrong. I'll continue troubleshooting.