scans won't run

Robert,

Usually reactivating the plugin should reschedule the cron jobs for the scans, so on the Wordfence Options page, near the bottom, can you click the link that says “Click to view your systems scheduled jobs in a new window”? There should be a number of lines that say “wordfence_start_scheduled_scan.”

If the cron jobs are missing entirely, it might be necessary to temporarily disable other plugins and then reinstall Wordfence, to see if it will work correctly then. (Sometimes plugin conflicts will cause strange issues like this.)

If the jobs appear, but they are scheduled in the past, then there is something stopping wp-cron from running when it should. Often this is something in .htaccess or another plugin.

Are you able to run a scan manually on the Scan page, and see it complete?

-Matt R

Hi Matt,

All of the jobs are appearing as expected, but it’s running scans manually that I’m having trouble with. I click the button and the text changes and then after a few seconds it just changes back without starting a new scan.

Cheers,
Robert

Ok — this type of issue is often caused by a theme, plugin, or .htaccess blocking wp-admin, so the admin-ajax.php can’t be reached.

That issue and a few others that stop scans like this are covered here:
My scans aren’t starting

Another possibility is that another script is interfering with a script that Wordfence needs to use. You can check for errors from scripts by opening the JavaScript console. Instructions are included here for most browsers:
Open the JavaScript Console for troubleshooting

If you see any errors listed in red on the Console tab, they may show which plugin is conflicting — if you’re not sure what the error means, you can post it here.

Let me know if this helps, or if you are still having trouble.

-Matt R