Windows 10 version 2004, which was released on May 27, is currently available for seekers or those who manually check for updates in Windows Updates settings.
In addition to new features, Windows 10 version 2004 (May 2020 Update) also comes with improvements to block potentially unwanted programs, also known short PUPs and PUAs, from showing up on your system or being installed on Windows PCs.
Windows 10 May 2020 Update allows you to maintain a track of the potentially unwanted programs and prevent them from being downloaded or installed on Windows 10 systems.
According to Microsoft, the Potentially Unwanted Programs or Potential Unwanted Programs come included in various types of software bundling and driver or registry optimizer.
After applying May 2020 Update, users are reporting that Windows Security app triggers security threat alerts even when the PUA file is gone. After the PUA has been removed or allowed to run on Windows 10, later scans of Windows Security are detecting the old items again, causing an erroneous detection loop.
“I was doing my routine scan and I found these threats highlighted as low and Defender wasn’t able to remove them, they keep showing up. I scanned using Malwarebytes as well, but this doesn’t show up over there,” one user noted.
It appears that Windows Defender has been defaulted to identify PUPs as a threat in Windows 10 version 2004. After the PUP has been removed, Windows Defender identities the same file again and again as a threat on the subsequent scans of the history.
To fix PUP and PUA warnings in Windows Security app, you would need to delete PUPs history information by following these steps:
- Open File Explorer.
- Navigate to C:\Program Data\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Scans\History\Service
- In the Service folder, delete PUP related files.
- Restart Windows and do a quick scan in Windows Security app.
The notifications for PUPs won’t show up again unless another PUP file is loaded on your system.
It’s not yet clear whether Microsoft is aware of the reports, but a fix could be on the horizon as the issue has been widely reported by affected users on Microsoft’s answers forum.