Remove virus detection from Windows defender quarantine

When Windows Defender or Windows security detects a virus, this virus will be quarantined.

Placing a malicious file such as a virus, malware, or potentially unwanted program in Quarantine isolates the file from the rest of the computer system.

So by quarantining a file, Defender essentially prevents the file from running or accessing other files, which could lead to further infection or damage. The isolated file is stored in a secure manner so that it cannot interact with or damage the rest of the system.

You can manually remove malicious files in quarantine or create a policy that automatically removes these types of malicious files from quarantine after a few days. This guide explains how this works.

Remove virus detection from Windows defender quarantine

Manually remove from quarantine

To manually remove a detection from quarantine, open Windows Security. Click on “Search” in the taskbar. In the search bar type: windows security

Then click on “Security History”.

You will see all recent items in the protection history here. Click on a detection and click on the “Actions” button at the bottom to choose the desired action.

You can now delete or restore a detection. You need administrator rights for both.

You now see that the threat is deleted or has been restored to the file's original location.

Automatically remove threats from quarantine

You can also set a policy to automatically remove threats from quarantine after x number of days.

To get started, open gpedit.msc. This is the Group Policy Editor. This tool is not in Windows home edition to use.

Open the following folders:

1. Computer configuration.
2. Administrative templates.
3. Windows components.
4. Microsoft Defender Antivirus.
5. Quarantine

Double-click the “Configure removal of items from the Quarantine folder” policy. Enable this policy and set the number of days.

This policy setting configures the number of days items remain in the Quarantine folder before they are deleted. If you enable this setting, items will be removed from the Quarantine folder after the specified number of days.

If you disable or do not configure this policy setting, items will remain in the Quarantine folder indefinitely and will not be automatically deleted. Now restart your computer and the policy will be active.

I hope this helped you. Thank you for reading!