Security Warnings in Vista

Yesterday I posted about putting shortcuts to applications such as Notepad2 in the SendTo menu. After I got mine set up, I noticed that Vista kept giving me a security prompt every time I opened Notepad2 (from the SendTo menu or any other way).



I unchecked "Always ask..." each time, but Windows continued to give me the same warning EVERY time I ran it. Other unsigned applications ran without this warning, so I knew it wasn't a global digitally-signed-only restriction in Vista. I had copied the Notepad2 executable to c:\windows\system32, so I thought that maybe Vista required all system32 exes to be signed. When I looked at the exe properties there, I saw this: This file came from another computer and might be blocked to help protect this computer.



I had "installed" Notepad2 by dragging the exe directly from my mapped network drive where I store all of my applications, downloads, installers, etc. Vista was trying to protect me from this foreign executable, and all I had to do was click the handy "Unblock" button, right?

Wrong. Each time I clicked Unblock > Apply > OK, it was re-blocked the next time I viewed the file properties. I made sure the ReadOnly and System attributes were not set on that file.

I dragged the exe to my desktop and checked the properties on that copy of the file, and there I was able to unblock it in the file properties. When I moved the exe from my desktop back into system32, it remained unblocked, and Vista no longer prompts me with that security message for Notepad2.

I'll probably be installing many of my most-used apps from my mapped drive or a USB flash drive, so I'll probably run into this again for any of those exes that I directly copy (if they don't have a setup process). I guess it's easy enough to copy them to one location on the Vista machine and unblock them before moving them to the path where I REALLY want them... but let me know if you find an easier way around this.

[edited 2006.12.17 to add:] I had originally emailed the brains behind Notepad2 (Florian Balmer) to request a digitally signed executable in the next update, and he was kind enough to email me back today. I'm excited to learn that he is still working on Notepad2 development. I don't know what else could be done to make it any better than it is today, but I'm looking forward to finding out. No word on whether the next version will be digitally signed, but it doesn't sound like it's really necessary anyway, as long as you "install" it properly.

If you aren't already using Notepad2, you can get it here. It's the best Notepad replacement (with text highlighting and so much more) I've ever seen, and it's free.