Scanned Removable Drives With Windows Defender in Windows 8

The new Windows release of Windows 8 comes with more advance features and a great Metro UI as well as more security than the operating systems that came before it.

The new version of Windows has Windows Defender into Windows 8 and Windows RT that helps guard your PC against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software, that is the more robust version of Windows Defender, which now protects against all kinds of malware.

Introduction of Windows Defender

In the latest version of the Windows operating system, Windows Defender is like the Microsoft Security Essentials product that serves the same level of protection as MSE provided. Now, Microsoft Security Essentials is not compatible with Windows 8 and you can't use MSE with Windows 8 or Windows RT.

Windows Defender runs in the background and uses green, yellow, and red color codes to show your PC's security status. You can also run your own scan whenever you want. By Default Windows Defender doesn't scan removable drives, like USB drives during the full scanning of your computer system. To scan removable drives along with the full PC you need to set some extra settings of Windows Defender.

So, in this article I will show you how to quickly change a setting to enable the Windows Defender to scan removable drives automatically.

How to Use the Windows Defender in Windows 8?

Step 1

In the Windows 8 Start Screen, you can move the cursor to the bottom-right to open the Charms Bar and select the Search option or you can press the Win+F keys to open the search box directly.



Step 2

In the search box, you can specify what you want. Search for the Windows Defender.



Step 3

Then click on the Windows Defender app when it appears in the right panel.



Step 4

A Windows Defender window will appear if Microsoft's security software is disabled.



Step 5

Next, switch to the Settings tab at the top of the window and then Advanced from the left panel of the window.



Step 6

Then check the box for "Scan removable drives" on the right-hand side to enable the scan of removable disks automatically when the PC is scanned.



Step 7

Finally, click Save Changes at the bottom of the Window.