Workaround for Defender change

Note: This issue was resolved in a Windows Defender update released on 12th February 2025. Please ensure you have downloaded all available Windows and Microsoft Defender updates as your first troubleshooting step before attempting any other steps mentioned in this article.

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Following the weekend of Jan 31st - Feb 02nd 2025, there have been reports of some exams experiencing slow load times, and in some cases errors that occurred during exam start. We discovered that a recent Microsoft Defender update released over this same timeframe caused an unintended delay with the launch of some exams.

We recommend applying an Exclusion in Windows Defender on ALL Delivery workstations to resolve this issue. Steps have been provided below using Powershell, that will allow the exclusion to apply to all Test Administrators at your testing center. In our testing of this exclusion, we have seen immediate improved exam launch times. This change does not need to be applied on the Admin computers or Server.

1) From the Delivery stations, in the Windows Search box type: “Powershell” and select ‘Run as administrator’:

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 2) Copy the following command into Powershell and hit Enter:

Add-MpPreference -ExclusionPath "C:\Users\*\AppData\Local\JxBrowser\7.37.3-b55-eap\locales\*.pak.info"

The exclusion should now be in place in Windows Defender and you can proceed to deliver exams.

3) If you wish to verify that the exclusion has been applied, click in the Windows Search box again and type: "Run" and open the Run app. 

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4) Type the command "WindowsDefender://exclusions" and press enter. A window should open which shows the exclusion listed.

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If you have any exam delivery issues after applying the change, please contact the Pearson VUE Test Centre Technical Support team (VSS).