Windows folder access protection and crash

[ak1dd]

I have Windows 11, Ransomware protection, Controlled folder access enabled. Pretty sure this is enabled by default now.

When I launch a wad from DL I get a crash and a "Protected folder access blocked" message from Windows. If I explicitly allow GZDOOM.EXE access to the folder DL runs gzdoom and doesn't crash. Fair enough. I can see that GZDoom is writing gzdoom.ini in Documents\My Games\GZDoom.

I do NOT have GZDoom installed using the installer under the Program Files directory. I just unzip in D:\Games\GZDoom. From what I understand on the Doomworld forum where a gzdoom contributor posted - if you use the installer it does read/write to the user folder - otherwise it behaves like a portable app and uses configs in the same dir as the gzdoom.exe. This is strange because gzdoom seems to read the ini in the same dir as itself, but it also writes the ini to the protected folder even if it is missing. I do have a gzdoom.ini file located in the same folder as gzdoom.exe .

I can launch GZDoom without DL and there is no crash and no protected folder access warning. I deleted the exception for GZDOOM.EXE listed under "Allow an app through Controlled folder access" . I tried it again launching GZDoom from the commandline with a wad and it doesn't crash and save/load work fine. If I launch the same wad with DL - GZDoom crashes. I tried deleting the gzdoom.ini in the protected folder but DL still crashes.

I do not have any extra parameters set in DL other than -savedir "save/$filename/" under Source Ports.

Perhaps I'm missing something or it is MS issue and/or gzdoom. I couldn't find anything in open/closed issues here so I thought I'd write it up

Everything works if I allow gzdoom controlled folder access but it seems strange the behaviour is different.