Configuring Malware Defender The Easy Way

okay, now that you have determined that a rule specific to explorer.exe is set to "deny"...

...double-click it (the application rule shown for explorer.exe, which would have been highlighted when you clicked "jump to rule"). This will open an "edit application rule" window. Select the "child applications" tab. Here, another double-click (on the line for the blocked app) will raise an "edit child application" window. You can delete the "deny" rule listed for your blocked app, or change it to "ask" or to "permit".

Click "OK" button to close each of the rule editing windows
(if you 'escape' or click the corner [x] or click cancel, you're changes will not be committed)

guessing you're referring to the "execute permission" selectbox, within the "Permissions" tab of the "edit application rule" window for explorer.exe
Yes, "Permit" here means that, in general, explorer.exe has permission to execute child applications...

...but, along the way, an overriding child rule must have been created by an accidental click in response to a popup. The default ruleset contains zero "child application" rules specific to explorer.exe

 

The "execute permission" will be used when explorer.exe be executed by other processes. But it only take effect in following case.

If the execute permission of child process is not "Permit", and the rule priority is higher than the matched rule of parent process, then the execute permission of child process will be used.

The "execute permission" can be used to write complex rule set. If you are using the default rule set, you can ignore it.

Executing child applications is controlled by the "Create new processes".

 

Apologies for the bad info, George. I had intended to type "create new processes" selectbox.

xiaolin, for explorer.exe (because it resides in "Application Rules - System" group) is it correct to disregarded rule priorities as the potential parent/child problem in this case? Unless the child happens to be another "System" application, the application rule for explorer.exe will always have higher priority, yes?

 

yes