Ok.. i went though deep into the system and killed anything that had 3dc on it... eventually i think i found the application list and trashed that too..
after doing all that killed bitdefender.. which i did before but couldn't hurt.. i reinstalled latest version. and got the allow prompt like before but this time it actually worked!
so.. at the moment its working.. knock on wood! Could some of the preferences have been locked or something.. or the app shortcut files list.. ?
something clearly was LOCKED. i think.