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On 12/13 , Windows Defender did an update and ever since I keep getting messages like the following when I try to access programs such as Carbonite, Quicken, etc. The message says:
Controlled folder Access Blocked C:\Program Folders ...qw.exe from making changes to the folder %userprofile\desktop
I have turned off the Controlled Folder Access off in Windows Defender as this error message popped up every time I wanted to access a program. I was able to get into the program but need to know what is going on and what I can do about it. Thank you.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
I was replying to Rob Koch's vitriolic post. See the quotes? Why am I here? Because as a Microsoft stack developer I have better things to do than debug why MSFT's dev tools suddenly stop working with a Windows 10 update.
The stated solution to this problem is to just disable a security feature. Does that seem right to anyone?
"In short, it's your trashy outdated software that's making it impossible for Microsoft to easily protect you from ransomware, so either get rid of them or live with it."
Included in that trashy outdated software is the latest release of Visual Studio 2017, IISExpress, and many other Microsoft tools. It seems like Defender could at least check the app's certificate before blocking it.
Replys of this kind are not helping anyone. Why are you even on a Microsoft site if this is what you think of their software?
How do I turn it off? It is horrendous. It blocks Outlook. (You realize that is a MS app right?). I have added Outlook as an allowed app. It doesn't work.
Syncing with my Google drive now fails. Writing to my documents folder fails. I've tried to unblock the app. No luck.
All of my Canon (You know - Canon - The world-renowned hackers and camera makers) software is blocked. I have had to unblock several applications. Maybe the CIO of Microsoft and Canon could get together to figure out which applications are safe. Include folks from Alphabet (Google) to the meeting too.
I've gone through the useless steps of turning off the Controlled folder access. I click to turn it off. The popup asking if I will allow the app to make changes appears. I click yes. Then it turns this horrid pile of rubbish setting back on.
Where in the registry do I fix this myself? I never should have turned it on. I made this mistake about a week ago and have been dreading it ever since.
It absolutely should – because that’s the only Windows Defender component that has the ability to block apps on the basis of folder access. However, we have seen some compatibility issues that can apparently prevent CFA from being turned off properly in the presence of a real-time third-party app. If you have any trouble with that, you should check the compatibility setting in Malwarebytes Premium, and make sure it's set to Never Register Malwarebytes in the Windows Action Center:
https://support.malwarebytes.com/docs/DOC-1149
GreginMich
I spent half a day trying to find out why I couldn't save to folders and use programs and continually getting the notifications from Windows Defender that something was denied on %userprofile%. The best thing I found was that my user profile was corrupt. One of the programs not letting me save my document was TurboTax which gave me an error. Another was my Seagate backup drive which wouldn't run. So I called TurboTax support and spent over an hour with them deleting their program and reinstalling. When reinstalling the program, twice it erred out. We then disabled my Malwarebytes and Windows Defender. The program installed just fine. Then reactivated Malwarebytes and was able to save my file in TurboTax with no problems. Then I tried to use my Seagate backup drive and it works just fine. In other words, everything works find leaving Windows Defender turned off. It has only been a couple of hours, but things that wouldn't work are working so it would appear that the problem was Windows Defender and I'll be leaving it off.
