Defender Offline Scan boots into Recovery Mode

kirbster 1 125 Reputation points
2026-10-13T17:45:15.7066667+00:00

26H2 26300.9711 Never seen this before, has anyone seen this? After todays update I ran a Defender Offline scan. When the scan started I noticed that it had started in the Preparing for Recovery window. I have never seen this before, anyone know why it is doing this?20261013_122350

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  1. Paul Chou 1,491 Reputation points
    2026-10-14T02:52:25.2366667+00:00

    hi,

    You and I are on the same boat. I was doing an offline scan and it went to the recovery mode. I am assuming that this is normal. Yet, according to AI: When a Windows Defender Offline scan boots straight into recovery mode (or Automatic Repair), it usually happens because the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) partition is corrupted, the boot configuration data (BCD) is damaged, or BitLocker is blocking the safe handoff to the offline scanning mini-OS.

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