Windows Security can protect your computer and data from all kinds of threats from the internet. You’d better turn on all protection features in Windows Security. However, you may find that Windows Security shows actions recommended warning but nothing is found. If so, you can try the solutions introduced in this MiniTool post to help you out.

What Is Windows Security?

Windows Security is a Windows built-in antivirus tool that is designed to help protect your computer and data from a wide range of threats, including viruses, malware, spyware, and other types of malicious software.

Windows Security supplies real-time protection (this feature can be manually disabled). Microsoft keeps updating the virus database to offer the latest antivirus protection. To some extent, Windows Security is enough to protect your Windows computer from viruses.

If all features in Windows Security are turned on, the Windows Security icon in the taskbar will be marked with a checkmark and a message saying Windows Security – No actions needed. The following screenshot is an example.

Windows Security no actions needed

If any feature in Virus & threat protection is disabled, the Windows Security icon will show up a message saying Windows Security – Actions needed. If you turn on all features in Virus & threat protection, this message will be removed.

Windows Security - Actions needed

If any feature in App & browser control is turned off, the Windows Security icon will show up a message saying Windows Security – Actions recommended. If you turn on all features in App & browser control, this message will be disappeared.

Windows Security - Actions recommended

You can see that Windows Security will show you a message when a needed or recommended feature is not turned on in time. But some users reflect that they see Windows Security actions recommended but nothing found in Windows Security.
This is a common issue. But it is annoying. Now, we will introduce the main causes of this issue to help you understand why this warning message appears.

How to Turn on/off Real-Time Protection in Windows Security?
How to Turn on/off Real-Time Protection in Windows Security?

This post shows you how to turn on or turn off real-time protection in Windows Security using two different methods.

Read More

Windows Security – Actions Recommended, but Nothing Found

When you see the following Windows Security actions recommended warning, you can just click the Windows Security icon and check if every feature is turned on.

actions recommended

If all features are enabled but this warning still appears, you can consider the following reasons:

There are bugs or viruses on your computer: If unfortunately, your computer has bugs or viruses, Windows Security could show this warning unexpectedly. Of course, bugs and viruses may have impacted your computer in other aspects.

Pending security updates that are not installed successfully: Microsoft keeps releasing updates for Windows Security to guarantee that users can get the latest protection. However, the security updates may be pending on your computer. This could be the cause of Windows Security actions recommended but nothing found.

There is something wrong with your Windows Defender Firewall: Your Windows Defender Firewall may run in errors, leading to a wrong warning display. On the other hand, you may have installed another antivirus software that is incompatible with Windows Defender Firewall. This can also make Windows Security show a wrong warning.

Some system files are corrupted: If some of your Windows functions like Windows Security do not work well, you can also consider that some system files get corrupted for some reason. Then, you need to take some measures to fix the corrupt system files.

Now, you know that possible reasons for Windows Security actions recommended but nothing found. It’s time to remove this warning.

When you see the Windows Security actions recommended warning, the first thing you need to do is to click the Windows Security icon, then click the Turn on button to enable all recommended features.

turn on App & browser control

However, if the above method doesn’t work for you, you will need to try the following solutions.

Solution 1: Turn off Background Apps and Services

Some apps and services that are running in the background can bring trouble like Windows Security actions recommended but nothing found on your computer. So, you can go to Task Manager to find these abnormal apps and services and force end them. Then, you can check if the warning message disappears.

Solution 2: Quit or Uninstall Third-Party Antivirus Software

If you have recently installed a third-party antivirus software, this could be the cause of that warning. Windows Security may be not compatible with this tool. You can quit or uninstall this third-party antivirus software to have a try.

>> Visit this post to learn the ways to uninstall programs: How to uninstall programs on Windows?

Solution 3: Use Safe Mode

Safe mode can start your Windows computer in a basic state, only using a limited set of files and drivers. If a problem doesn’t happen in safe mode, this means that default settings and basic device drivers are not the cause. This may not help you find the cause, but this can help you narrow down the source of an issue and troubleshoot problems on your Windows PC.

Solution 4: Turn on Every Feature in the Reputation-Based Protection Settings

No matter whether you are using Windows 10 or Windows 11, you can use these steps to turn on every feature in the Reputation-based protection settings.

Step 1: Click the Windows Security icon from the taskbar to open Windows Security.

Step 2: Click App & browser control to continue.

Step 3: On the next page, click the Reputation-based protection settings link to continue.

click Reputation-based protection settings

Step 4: Turn on all features on the next page.

Solution 5: Install Pending Windows Updates

To make sure Windows Security work at its best, you’d better make sure all pending updates are installed on your device. You can install pending Windows updates like performing a Windows update. Here we go:

On Windows 10

Step 1: Press Windows + I to open the Settings app.

Step 2: Click Update & Security to continue.

Step 3: Under Windows Update, click the Check for updates button to see if there are available updates that are needed to be installed.

Step 4: If there are pending updates, you need to click Download & install to get all these updates on your device.

Tip: You may need to restart your computer to complete the installation process.

On Windows 11

Step 1: Press Windows + I to open the Settings app.

Step 2: Click Windows Update from the left menu.

Step 3: Click the Check for updates button to see if there are available updates that are needed to be installed.

Step 4: Click Download & install to get all available updates.

Tip: You may need to restart your computer to complete the installation process.

Solution 6: Install All Protection Updates

Step 1: Click the Windows Security icon from the taskbar to open it.

Step 2: Select Virus & threat protection to continue.

Step 3: Scroll down to find Virus & threat protection updates, then click the Check for updates link on Windows 10 or click the Protection updates link on Windows 11 to continue.

click Check for updates

Step 4: On the next page, click the Check for updates button to see if there are available updates. The updates will be automatically installed.

After using this method, you can check if the Windows Security – Actions Recommended warning goes away.

Solution 7: Reset Windows Security

You can run a command in Windows PowerShell to reset the Windows Security app. Here is a guide:

Step 1: Right-click Start and select Windows PowerShell (Admin) from the WinX menu. If you can’t find the Windows PowerShell (Admin) option from the WinX menu, you can click the Search icon, search for Windows PowerShell, and right-click Windows PowerShell from the search result to run it as administrator.

Step 2: Copy and paste this command into Windows PowerShell, then press Enter to run it:

Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.SecHealthUI -AllUsers | Reset-AppxPackage

Step 3: Restart your computer.

After these steps, you can check if the warning is disappeared. If the issue persists, you can try the next solution.

Solution 8: Run DISM and SFC

The full name of SFC is System File Checker. Running the System File Checker tool on your Windows 10 or Windows 11 computer can repair the missing and corrupt system files on your Windows PC.

On Windows 11 and Windows 10, you need to first run the inbox Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) tool prior to running the System File Checker.

Here are the steps you need:

Step 1: Click the search icon in the taskbar and search for cmd.

Step 2: Right-click Command Prompt and select Run as administrator. You can also click Run as administrator from the right panel of the search result. This will run Command Prompt as administrator.

Step 3: Run the following command. You can copy and paste this command to Command Prompt and press Enter to run it.

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

Step 4: When the above command runs successfully, you need to run sfc /scannow in Command Prompt. This will repair the missing and corrupted system files.

If SFC runs into errors without fixing your issue, you can refer to this post to see what you can do: Use the System File Checker tool to repair missing or corrupted system files.

These are the 8 methods that can be used to remove Windows Security actions recommended warning. We hope you can find a suitable method here.

Want to remove Windows Security actions recommended warning? You can select a suitable method from this article.Click to Tweet

Recover Your Missing Files on Windows 11/10

If some of your important files get lost or deleted due to a virus attack or for some other unexpected reasons, is it possible to get them back?

If they are not overwritten by new data, you can use a professional data recovery software like MiniTool Power Data Recovery to rescue them.

This MiniTool file recovery tool is specially designed to recover all kinds of data from different types of data storage devices like computer internal hard drives, external hard drives, memory cards, USB flash drives, SD cards, pen drives, and more. It works on all versions of Windows, including Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1, and Windows 7.

This software has a free edition. You can use it to scan the target drive and see if it can find your needed files. You can even use this software to preview up to 70 types of files. On the other hand, you are allowed to recover 1 GB of files for free by using the free edition.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

After downloading and installing this software on your PC, you can follow these steps to check for the data recovery effect and recover your data.

Step 1: Open the software to enter its main interface. Here, you can see all the drives that can be detected successfully by this software. Find the target drive and hover over it, then click the Scan button to start scanning that drive. You can also switch to the Devices tab and click the Scan button to scan the entire disk.

select the target drive to scan

Step 2: You need to wait a few minutes for the software to complete the entire scanning process. Then, you can see the scan results that are listed by path. You can open each path to find your needed files.

find files by path

You can also switch to Type to make the software show the scanned files by type. This can help you quickly find files.

find files by type

Step 3: Check the files you want to recover, then click the Save button and select a folder from your computer to save them. The destination folder should not be the original location of the selected files, otherwise, the missing files could be overwritten and become unrecoverable.

save your selected files

If you want to use this tool to recover more files, you need to use a full edition. You can go to the MiniTool Software site to select a suitable edition as per your requirements.

Bottom Line

Always see the Windows Security actions recommended warning but found nothing? You can find the possible reasons in this article. You can also know how to remove this warning using different methods. We hope this post is useful for you. If you have other good suggestions or issues, you can let us know via [email protected].

  • linkedin
  • reddit