Virus and Threat Protection..Unauthorized changes blocked

Controlled folder access blocked C:\EverQuest\eqgame.exe from making changes to memory.

Is this important?

must I add this to exclusions?

Would this cause me to crash.
If so, and others have not added to exclusions, why would I need to do this, what does it stop by the Virus and Threat Protection blocking access?

Controlled folder access is part of Microsoft Ransomware protection:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/m...enable-controlled-folders?view=o365-worldwide

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/controlled-folder-access-windows-10

Short answer, exclude your EverQuest folder from this if you are getting warnings and no malware is trying to access it. You can also view the "Block history" and see if it is blocking anything you don't want blocked.

I actually had Controlled Folder Access turned off until you mentioned it. I've now turned it on and will see how it goes. So thanks.

I just zoned to Ethermere Tainted West Karana and the pop up appeared.

I advise to run EQ through Steam. There's a reason why we have software repositories like Steam, Github, etc. The chance of hijacking a download is vastly diminished if is done in a controlled environment.

I just zoned to Ethermere Tainted West Karana and no pop up. Sorry, I don't know what to tell you. You can go to https://www.virustotal.com/ and submit your eqgame.exe file there if you wish. If it comes up clean, I would exclude it.

But as always, everything you do is at your own risk, I am not responsible for what's on your computer and what you do.

MS and McAfee malware always go HAM on EverQuest for some reason. Something in the behavior scan is falsly triggered a lot, it is an old game after all. Add eqgame to your AV exception list, thats safe to do so it wont get falsely flagged again.

Worst advice ever, wow /boggle... that just adds another layer of latency into the game that just isn't needed at all

Agree, I would never run EQ thru Steam. Why? That is no protection anyway. I have never heard of anyone getting a virus thru this game. However it is a fact that many AV see EQ as a threat and falsely report it as such.

OP has had more than his share of odd computer issues. I think there is a lot of "customization" without control going on and that makes it very hard to troubleshoot his specific errors.

This is nonsense. All the Steam "version" of EverQuest does is run Launchpad... you don't download patch data from Steam. So what exactly are you accomplishing doing this?

This advice from the same person railing against DLSS. Unreal.

lol wut? In what way?

What anti virus program are you using?

default windows

Yeah, no idea what he is talking about. Either he has never used Steam or doesn't understand how software repositories work. Steam does not add "another layer of latency".

Can't believe he got 4 votes for saying Steam "adds latency" to games. That is 100% false, EQ does not run slower by using Steam at all, not one millisecond. Software repositories do not affect runtime performance at all.

And yes, running software from a software repository is always safer. That's why we have Github, that's why we have Linux repositories.

+1 to people not understanding how Steam works. If it added latency, there wouldn’t be online games on that platform. Rocket League used to be, before becoming Epic exclusive and I never had any issues with it and Rocket League is very sensitive to latency issues.

Except running EQ through Steam does none of that. All it does is add an extra step to logging in... the files still come from Daybreak every single patch.

Getting something from a repository doesn't prevent you from getting malware as those can and have been hacked to add unwanted items for people to download.

Nothing is 100% safe. But repositories greatly diminish the chance that a download is hijacked or that someone follows a bad link. The curation on software repositories also adds an extra layer of protection.

We have gone from an era of needing a virus protection program on your PC to be safe, to an era where it is no longer required to run a virus check on every file you download. This is in large part due to software repositories.

And as others have said you are still getting the files from Daybreak regardless of using steam or not. And regardless you should not treat files safe just because it is from a repository.

No, the game is initially downloaded from Steam and a large part of the game's content is downloaded from Steam.

(Steam servers which are exponentially faster than the Daybreak servers btw)

When talking about patches, yes that is true, that content is not coming from the Steam servers.

Still, this makes Steam much safer, since Steam takes away the ability to click a bad link, to have the client hijacked, etc.