Virus security protection with W10

I have a HP desktop that I bought in late December with Windows 10. The computer came with a trial version of Mcafee and the trial version expired earlier this month. While I can't be sure, I think I installed Quicken 05 and MS Office shortly thereafter I bought the computer.

This week I discovered that Quicken was no longer working properly. After trying several times to get Quicken to work, I gave up and decided to reinstall the program. I've NEVER had a problem installing Quicken on several computers when I upgraded to newer models.

This time I just couldn't make it install. I kept seeing a "Virus & threat protection" popup on the screen which I disregarded, only to fail the installation one more time. I'm not sure if I removed Mcafee early in this process or not, but I finally did remove it from the computer. MS's Defender took over when I removed Mcaffe, but I had the same problem trying to install Quicken. I finally found myself in Setting where I turned off ALL virus protection and then I was able to install Quicken and other programs.

The popup I saw was...

Unauthorized changes blocked
Control folder access blocked C:\program...\quicken...

IF I had been signed in as the administrator, would I have received this block?

Check to see if controlled folder access is activated under Windows Security -> Virus and Threat protection -> Manage Ransomware protection. If it is activated, there should be an option to allow Quicken program to bypass the protection to install and run. Don't know if admin login would have helped.

starflyr said:

IF I had been signed in as the administrator, would I have received this block?

Yes. Quicken would would have been blocked regardless of the account you were signed in with. Administrators need to be protected from potential malware as much as any user. You can turn off Controlled folder access temporarily to enable the install. Once installed, you may need to add Quicken to the list of allowed apps. See these tutorials.

Enable or Disable Controlled Folder Access in Windows 10 | Tutorials

Add or Remove Allowed Apps for Controlled Folder Access in Windows 10 | Tutorials

Bree said:

Yes. Quicken would would have been blocked regardless of the account you were signed in with. Administrators need to be protected from potential malware as much as any user. You can turn off Controlled folder access temporarily to enable the install. Once installed, you may need to add Quicken to the list of allowed apps. See these tutorials.

Thanks. I'm basically coming from the OS world after leaving the Win world back in '08. Yes, I did keep a limited Win10 world going with Quicken and Excel, but I guess I never ran in to this Virus Protection Block until yesterday. My previous W10 experience was with Parallels running on my iMac. I now have a stand alone Win10 computer and happy to be fully back.

Thanks for helping clear this up with me.

starflyr said:

Thanks. I'm basically coming from the OS world after leaving the Win world back in '08. ..

Well, times have changed and threats have become worse. Controlled Folder Access provides Ransomware protection. It's actually quite a recent introduction, initilally disable by default. With the latest build of Windows 10 it is enabled by default.

Bree said:

Well, times have changed and threats have become worse. Controlled Folder Access provides Ransomware protection. It's actually quite a recent introduction, initilally disable by default. With the latest build of Windows 10 it is enabled by default.

Thanks. Was this a very recent change in Win10? I bought my latest computer at the end of December and installed MS Office and Quicken immediately. Then off to out of the country until mid February. I used both programs when I returned to the US and didn't have any problems accessing either one of them. Not sure what cause Quicken 05 to take a dive, but it did and then ran into the Controlled Folder Access when I tried to reinstall it.

Does new software automatically turn off the Controlled Folder Access when installing new programs or does the user have to know that they have to manually allow access to folders?

If you had the Features Update to 1809, that would likely have enabled Controlled Folder Access. As I said, it first appeared with 1703, the Fall Creators Update, but was off by default. 1809 added the ability to easily add recently blocked apps to the whitelist, so I assume MS decided it was ready to be enabled by default.

I have had it enabled since 1703 and regard occasionally having to whitelist an app as a small price to pay for the protection afforded.

Bree said:

Well, times have changed and threats have become worse. Controlled Folder Access provides Ransomware protection. It's actually quite a recent introduction, initilally disable by default. With the latest build of Windows 10 it is enabled by default.

I noticed it was on only a few days ago, when I got my first alert from it.

Eddie Doc said:

I noticed it was on only a few days ago, when I got my first alert from it.

Did it turn on by default with the October feature update, or with the last CU (March 12)? I don't know.