If your Windows Defender displays an error message saying “Items skipped during scan the cause may be that you added an exclusion to your scan settings or if network scanning is disabled on your system. If you encounter this problem, you may need to enable network scanning in Windows Defender on Windows 11/10 to fix the problem.
The error message appears during quick and full scans.
Enable Network Scanning in Windows Defender
There are three ways to disable or enable network scanning in Windows Defender on Windows 11/10. Each of them will allow network scanning.
- PowerShell method
- Group Policy method
- Registry editor method
Depending on the version of Windows and your privileges, you can choose one.
1]PowerShell method
Launch PowerShell with administrator privileges
Type and run the command:
Set-MpPreference –DisableScanningNetworkFiles 0
There is no output for this command, so you will need to copy a file from the network and see if you still receive the error.
If you want to turn it off, set it to 1.
2]Group Policy Method
Open the Group Policy Editor and navigate to:
Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Defender Antivirus > Scan.
Double click Scan network files and set the option to Enabled. Then click OK.
Once you enable the setting, all network files will be scanned.
The default setting is not to scan any network files.
3]Registry Editor Method
If you are using Windows Home, you can try changing registry values as group policies are not available for you.
Open Registry Editor and navigate to:
ComputerHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindows Defender
Right click on Windows Defender and create a key (folder) with the name Analyse
Under scan, create a new DWORD with the name DisableScanningNetworkFiles
Set the value of DWORD to 0 to activate scanning.
Close the registry the next time you copy a file from the network; it will be scanned.
You can copy the key and import it to another computer to apply it instantly.
I hope the post was easy to follow and now I can scan network files.
POINTE: You can also scan mapped network drives with Windows Defender on Windows 11/10.
