"Sense" service keeps crashing

Question

A couple days ago, something tried to start the "Sense" service, display name "Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection Service", (start on demand). It apparently crashed and the service manager tried every 5 minutes to restart it (in accordance with its recovery options). I wound up with quite a few dump files with names like "MsSense.exe.7736.protected.dmp". A reboot stopped it. The system event log (starting in July 2021) says this hadn't happened before. If I manually try to start it (with services.msc) I get a message box saying it unexpectedly stopped and the whole thing starts again (retry every 5 minutes and crash dumps). Otherwise, there are no complaints from Windows. These are running and the security tray icon has the OK checkmark.

mpssvc Windows Defender Firewall
WinDefend Microsoft Defender Antivirus Service
WdNisSvc Microsoft Defender Antivirus Network Inspection Service

I'd like to figure out what's going on and fix it. My first attempts at capitalizing on the dump files failed because (1) WinDBG could not open the DMP file and (2) KernelDumpDecrypt.exe could not decrypt it.

Are there any suggestions on fixing the problem itself or on unlocking the dump files? Thanks!

Answer 1

"Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection" is the enterprise product.
you could try Troubleshoot Microsoft Defender for Endpoint onboarding issues

Answer 2

I am receiving Error 15: Failed to start SENSE service. While Onboarding the Defender Service was not able to start. and if I try to run manually it says the service is not responding to the control function. It was observed on Server 2019 Core Edition. The Defender Advanced Threat Protection Service not able to run. If anyone has some updates Please post. I am also working with MS support, but unfortunately no resolution yet

Answer 3

so almost a year and still no answer to this issue by any msft engineer ?

Answer 4

We are seeing the same crashing across multiple Azure VMs