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LucasTurner's avatar
LucasTurner
Iron Contributor
Apr 14, 2025

How to recover files deleted or quarantined by windows defender on Windows 11?

Hi all, Windows Defender on my Windows 11 computer mistakenly deleted some of my important files, probably due to a false alarm. Now the files are either deleted outright or quarantined. Is there any...
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FlameRat_YehLon's avatar
FlameRat_YehLon
Copper Contributor
Jul 02, 2026

Just in case anyone still got this issue, the method shown in this article https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-endpoint/restore-quarantined-files-microsoft-defender-antivirus worked for me.

Note that you probably should uninstall the app version of Microsoft Defender in Start Menu (which honestly I don't think perform any better than the system built-in Windows Defender, just that it allow remote access to the protection history without being able to perform any action to it) to prevent it from quarantining the file again, and the command in the article only works in cmd, not PowerShell. 

Also, the actual command to restore specific file might not work, so maybe try using 

MpCmdRun.exe -Restore -ListAll

instead.

Assuming you remove the app version of Microsoft Defender, after restoring, the built-in version of Windows Defender should kick in and quarantine the file again, and you can allow the file there to actually restore it.