Action Center Showing Potentially Harmful Software Detected When No Issues Are There

I recently cleaned up a laptop running Win7 Home Premium. At the time it was running Norton 360, which I removed (showed as expired), and installed AVG Free. I scanned and came up with a bunch of viruses, then ran SuperAntiSpyware and MalwareBytes, which also found a ton of stuff. It is now clean and running really well, with the exception that Windows Action Center shows "Potentially Harmful Software Detected" and gives the option to "clean system" If I tried to clean the system it would launch Windows Defender, but it couldn't start the service. I unistalled AVG and ran sfc /scannow, which now allows Defender to start, but if I clean the system it launches Windows Defender and finds nothing. No matter what I try I cannot get the message to go away. Is there a way to clean action center or manually remove the message?

 

Adjust what it notifies you:
http://www.howtogeek.com/80122/how-to-manage-action-center-in-windows-7-2/

 

I've tried unchecking everything under 'Security' and it's still there....

 

jools1976...This hints at something the security software on the PC may have done in one of the posts:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...ortant-i/bb70ebb2-c27f-41b5-a7cf-b889a406ccf5

Could it be that something installed on the PC at an earlier time broke Defender before you got a look at the PC?

This points to a possible browser based issue:

http://www.blogines.com/remove-potentially-harmful-software-detected-pop-up-stop-adware/

Did you run any anti-adware software? Maybe that would do the trick as I guess it could be that a toolbar or plugin for a browser disabled Defender. Above recommends turning off extensions/plug-ins in browsers to see if that helps. AdwCleaner is a good tool for removing adware.

One other thing comes to mind. Maybe the malware is in system restore files still. Have you considered turning off system restore? Under the circumstances, I don't think it could hurt, since the PC was heavily loaded with malware. Turn it off and then back on and make sure all the restore points are gone.

This got marked as an answer at least:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...ndy/d409d480-d14a-485b-b441-9b0544aa969c?db=5

Hard to find any good answers to what looks like a common problem or variants of this problem that produce the same message seem common...

 

Thanks for the links/info. In the fist one it addresses an issue caused by Defender not running, whereas in my case it is running, and not picking up any threats when scanned. It just refuses to clear the notification in the Action Center. The second link is talking about a browser popup, but this is something going on within Windows, not my browser. Is there any way to manually clear the Action Center? I have tried Action Center>>Maintenance>>View Reliability History>>View All Problem Reports>>Clear All Problem Reports, but it didn't help.

 

Yeah I was wondering if there might actually still be part of a malware program or plugin on the PC that Defender can't remove (maybe a file is in use and locked from removal somehow). This happens quite a bit with programs and with Windows too. Maybe it is all gone like you say, in which case, I couldn't find anything Googling. That's why I was suggesting trying some more anti-malware/adware techniques.

I did see a reference to cleaning the registry, but I would definitely run AdwCleaner on that PC anyway. I'd run it on any PC that is known to have been infected and actually run it over and over until it doesn't find anything. You could try running CCleaner's registry cleaner or another one, but make sure you back up the registry first and then leave the backup on the PC when you give it back.

My instinct based on studying MS' ways for what it's worth is that the pop up seems to me likelier a reflection of a portion of something that Defender doesn't like being on the computer than a failure of the program to clear its status. I'm only 60% I guess on that, but Defender seems a fairly well developed element of Windows 7 to me. I sure would like if I could find someone who resolved this issue. It seems to have been a fairly common thing but detailed information also seems to be hard to find...

 

So I ended up sorting it out, it ended up being a corrupted user account. The solution was to create a new administrator account, and delete the existing one (the one giving the Action Center problem notification) after copying all the files from the 'Users' folder over to the new account. Once I did that everything was good. I reinstalled AVG and scanned everything again just to be sure, but the notification is clear now. Thanks for all the help along the way though.

 

Great. That's the first solid answer I found on this, so thanks for replying with the info...