If you are 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 10 and Windows 8 or Microsoft Security Essentials on Windows 7. This tool does not replace your antimalware product. Safety scanner is a portable executable and does not 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. Safety Scanner only scans when manually triggered and is available for use 10 days after being downloaded. 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. Starting November 2019, Safety Scanner will be SHA-2 signed exclusively.
