Vista - Turn off "Always ask before opening this file"

I downloaded some of Mark Russinovitch's programs from the Tech Net
sysinternals site on one machine then copied them to a utilities folder on my
Vista machine. Whenever I try to run one of them I get the "Do you want to
run this file" dialog. I uncheck the checkbox next to "Always ask", but it
doesn't do any good. Next time I try to run the program the checkbox is still
checked and I get asked. This is absurdly patronizing. How can I make Vista
understand that I do trust the programs once and for all? This dialog does
not come up at all for programs like Word 2007, which was preinstalled, or
Adobe 8, which I downloaded and installed. Why is Vista putting up such a
fuss over a file that I copied from a USB key?

Hello,

- Click start
- Type: cmd
- Right-click cmd
- Click Run As Administrator
- Browse to the file and execute it from the command prompt
- uncheck the box

It should now be properly "unchecked".

You will need to follow this procedure any time you need to "uncheck" a file
that is located in a folder that can only be written to by administrators.


--
- JB
Microsoft MVP - Windows Shell/User

Windows Vista Support Faq
http://www.jimmah.com/vista/

Thanks. That partially works. I run cmd as admin, cd to \Program Files\utl
and then run, say, autoruns.exe. The result: the program just runs, as in the
days of old. But no dialog pops up, so I can't clear the box. If I run
explorer from the administrative cmd session the dialog does pop up, but I
still can't make the change stick. My account has full control of the folder.

So running GUI apps from an admin cmd line will bypass the questions, but
still provides no way to remove the dialog when running from explorer. There
must be a way to do this, since I don't have this problem with Word
(preinstalled) or Adobe reader 8 (Installed by me).

If I right click on autoruns.exe from explorer there is an option to
"unblock" the file. If I click unblock and apply the UI updates as though "it
worked", but it doesn't. Right clicking again shows the same "unblock"
status. And this is on an instance of explorer run from the administrative
cmd line with runas using my account, which is an admin account with full
control of the folder.

So I still don't know how to end the unwanted grilling when I run a
"sysinternals" program from explorer. We must be missing something. Any ideas?

Odd that it doesn't prompt when being ran as an administrator.

The reason it's not working when you run explorer as administrator is
because explorer generally doesn't allow itself to be ran as administrator.

You're in a catch-22 situation ... here's a way to solve the problem, tho:

From the "run as administrator" command prompt, issue these commands, where
FILE.EXE is the executable you want to remove the warning from:

ren FILE.EXE file.exe.bak
type file.exe.bak > FILE.EXE


--
- JB
Microsoft MVP - Windows Shell/User

Windows Vista Support Faq
http://www.jimmah.com/vista/

Thanks! That worked. And it explains a lot. The files I downloaded from
sysinternals all have an alternate data stream embedded in them. The ADS
contains this data: :Zone.Identifier:$DATA 26.

Your procedure works because type does not copy the alternate data stream!
Excellent.

Here's another way. Download the sysinternals utility streams.exe. It can
find and optionally delete the ADS, eliminating the need to make ADS free
copies.

Yep ...

When you run that application, the "security warning" dialog is running
BEFORE the UAC prompt appears, so it doesn't have permision to modify the
file and delete the ADS! Whoops!

And since it doesn't want to prompt when being run from an administrative
command line, and it is very difficult to get an elevated explorer ... well,
it makes things rather difficult to accomplish without a third-party tool or
other hackish method.


--
- JB
Microsoft MVP - Windows Shell/User

Windows Vista Support Faq
http://www.jimmah.com/vista/