Windows 10: Trouble opening MSERT.log file after scan

W11 Home, 64-BitOver the last couple of days I have been receiving Microsoft notification updates; the most recent was a KB update, I don't know about the rest. Every time when the updates have finished I rebooted my machine. Regardless of which reboot method I use my laptop auto boots into repair mode. I have tried various troubleshooting methods from Chkdsk 2-3x, SFC 2-3x, repairing the image at least 2x, and rolling back to a previous image from 3 and 6 days ago. The only thing I have not tried is completely wiping and reinstalling.One of the troubleshooting tools I found was to run a

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MSERT Log Empty

Why does MSert tell me I have 16 infections but at the end it says no virus found and the log is empty with no listed infections?

 

After Scan, No Log File is shown ?

As I said in my post above, the log never shows infected files, that's only displayed at the end if the MAPS verification the MSERT performs near the end of the process confirms that active malware is present.

The Infected files counter displayed while scanning means nothing, it's just a count of the signature matches made up to that point in the scan, which since these can include false positive detections of files which aren't truly malware, will often result in either less or even zero active malware detections after the MAPS check.

So the No Infected Files Found at the end is all that really matters, while the log file is simply there to help troubleshoot any problems with the operation of the client that result in errors. It was never intended for most users to look at, so it's never displayed, nor has any log been displayed by Microsoft security products at end of scan. Only a short list of detections if any were made and reference to an internal list of these detections with more detail in some cases. The MSERT doesn't have this, only what is displayed by the client UI itself when the scan completes.

The reason you're hearing you should try 3rd-party scanning apps is we're all users of Microsoft products, not employees, so rather than push only their own products we'll tell you what we suggest rather than some supposed Microsoft line. However, even Microsoft will often suggest other options, since it's the 3rd-party app developers in general that made Windows the popular operating system it is today.

Rob

 

MSERT Log Empty

Hi Mike,

I am Dave, I will help you with this.

Rest assured that is normal and indicates no malware was fond on your PC.

The way msert works is it scans the files and marks files that may be infected, then at the end of the scan those files are checked against the database and if they are found to not contain malware then msert will report nothing was found.