Seems that this is a known issue and so far I have been advised to disable Admin Tools. Unfortunately, this is not an option for the site I am installing jDownloads on, so if I cannot find the particular setting in Admin Tools (htaccess maker), then I'll have to use another download manager that is OK with Admin Tools.
Does anyone know what the particular setting is that causes jDownloads "Check Download Area" to 403?
I have not been able to find any logs to tell me what actually happened other than the apache server logs that say
GET /administrator/components/com_jdownloads/helpers/scan.php?key=################&mode=2&test=1 HTTP/1.0
Also if anyone can point me in the right direction to help determine how to make these two extensions play well together would be appreciated.
I see that there has been some discussion, but no answers other than remove Admin Tools.
https://www.jdownloads.com/forum/index.php?topic=14100.0