Why on earth would you format it if Windows Defender caught the "virus" (in this case a false positive) before you had a chance to run it? As long as you haven

Why on earth would you format it if Windows Defender caught the "virus" (in this case a false positive) before you had a chance to run it? As long as you haven't run it (php in this case, so you'd have to have run them on a local web server), even if there were a virus, you could simply delete the file without opening/running it and you wouldn't have an issue. I also have to know...if you think you have to format the laptop whenever a file you haven't run is detected to be a virus, how many hours have you spent doing this useless exercise?