Solved! "This app is blocked for your protection" during boot. Which app???

[Mighty]

Frustrating one. Win 10 is telling me on boot that one of my apps is being blocked. But, the dialog box does not provide any information whatsoever on which app it is. The only button on the dialog is "Close."

Is there a log somewhere that will tell me which app is blocked?

I realize I can disable stuff until I find the program in question. But, I'm not really in the mood to sit here and watch this thing boot over and over.

Possibly connected: This started happening when I uninstalled Avast and installed Avira. So, it could have something to do with that. And/or, I also followed the steps at wikihow to disable Avira's upgrade nags.

Suggestions appreciated,

Drake Christensen

 

[DeadRam]

Open Task Manager and click the Startup tab. You can disable items in the list. Look for Avast or Avira.

 

[Mighty]

I know I can disable stuff that way. I'm looking to avoid that.

Avira is *supposed* to be there. Avast was successfully uninstalled, and does not appear there.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Then have a look in Windows Event Viewer, it may help you to nail the culprit:

http/www.tomshardware.co.uk/faq/id-3128616/windows-event-viewer.html

 

[Mighty]

The search function is pretty awful. I have to open up each folder and search in it individually. There are probably at least 50 sub-folders under the Windows folder alone. It might be easier to brute force it and start disabling boot programs.

As an added bit of info, I got another useless "Blocked" dialog about the time you submitted your message. IOW, not during a boot. Obviously, I have no idea if that's the same app trying to run or a different one. And, no way to narrow down my search within Event Viewer.

Does anyone have any more specific ideas where those blocked events would be logged? Which specific folder? Or, at least narrow it down to a half dozen or so?

 

[Mighty]

Oh, yeah. One other tidbit that might be involved, but slipped my mind. Immediately after installing Avira, Windows informed that there was an update to install. So, I went ahead and let it do that.

 

[Mighty]

Here's a screenshot of the offending dialog http/www.mightydrake.com/Pics/TechSupport/App%20Blocked%202018-01-03%2018_52_02-.png

 

[gdmaclew]

The only thing I can suggest is to download and run Autoruns from this source...

https/filehippo.com/download_autoruns/

It will show every process being loaded at Startup.

 

[Mighty]

*sigh* I guess I can give it a try. I've used Autoruns before, and it's a ginormous pile of information.

It's looking like I'm going to end up devoting an afternoon to rebooting my computer.

 

[Alabalcho]

The only thing I can suggest is to download and run Autoruns from this source...
https/filehippo.com/download_autoruns/
It will show every process being loaded at Startup.

Autoruns is well-known Microsoft utility, and offering a download location of fuzzy site is not the right thing to do...
https/docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns