Avast UI and Software Restriction Policies

Hi, wonder if anyone knows why … but also hoping might help others as I can’t find original unresolved question here.

I queried some long time back why I couldn’t get AvastUI to launch with Windows 7 or 10 Pro’s Software Restriction Policy set to ‘default deny’.

I couldn’t create an allow path rule to Avast’s AppData folder because this broke my group policy - which took a reinstall of Windows to narrow down to my Avast path rule. I’m assuming Avast has some voodoo self-protection, but anyway it happened. When I deleted the Avast path rule, group policy worked again. I do not expect to understand these things.

The latest AvastFree version 17.6.2310 (build 17.6.3625.0) running on Win10Pro (version 1607 build 14393.1593) was still throwing up a white window for AvastUI, which wasn’t much use. I could see in Event Viewer the problem was SRP related becasue local group policy was blocking AvastUI. I could get the UI to work only by turning off SRP default deny, but that made no sense.

Anyhow, I seem finally to have cured my problem by deleting SRP’s automatic environment path rule for the Program Folder (all the %%% malarky) and browsing to the Program Folder and creating a bespoke unrestricted path rule. I have no idea why this has worked because other programs were happy to run with the old rule.

Anyhow, whether or not this really cured it, I now have ‘default deny’ SRP and Avast UI back launching on log in. Something I didn’t have for two years.

I do not expect to understand.