Windows Vista says XY "publisher not verified"

[bpalmer]

Hello. New registered user here. Every time I open XY, MS Vista yells at me "The publisher could not be verified. Are you sure you want to run this software?" Most annoying. I uncheck the box "always ask before opening this file", but it pops up when I restart XY anyway.

Is this the MS way to get the developer to pay MS money to register the program, or am I missing a simple way to let Vista know permanetly that XY is ok to run every time?

Thanks!
Bruce

[admin]

First time I hear this. Really annoying to me too. No idea how to stop it.

[mwb1100]

Are you running XY from a network drive or a local drive? This sounds like some security message that might come from running an .exe over the network.

[bpalmer]

No, I'm just using my local C: drive, no networking. I did a little more reading and Vista is looking for a Publisher Certificate imbedding into the exe that certifies that Donald Lessau actually compiled the code. It is a Microsoft thing.

[mwb1100]

Yeah, but what's causing Vista to complain only about XY not being signed? I'd guess that most non-Microsoft .exe's are not signed, so why complain about this one? As far as I know the policy about checking for signature defaults to checking when the program comes from some other machine (over the LAN or Internet), not when the program is local.

[admin]

I did a little research, and found that adding a publisher certificate would be quite some work for me, and I'd have to do this for every new built. Not suitable for my speed of development.

Most Vista users do not seem to have this problem. I wonder what are the conditions.

[zer0]

To raise this thread from its ashes, I'd like to mention that I am also having this issue, and it occurs on both my XP and Win 7 machines. Also, it seems to happen only when I update my no-install builds. What this tells me is that when I actually install XY, the installer registers it on the system, so it doesn't pop up with a warning every time. No-install build doesn't go through the same process so the OS knows nothing about it.

So far, my solution has been that tickbox on the warning message that bpalmer mentioned in his first post. However, due to your admirable ability to release betas practically on a daily basis, I have to repeat that step every time I update and I wish I didn't have to. Unfortunately, I don't know how, if installing, Windows "registers" XYplorer.exe or I would have attempted to create a modified version of jacky's auto-update to include this functionality. If 2-ish years on it's still too much bother then no problem, I've survived so far, but there's something you can do to mitigate this issue then I'd definitely appreciate it (it'll trim that 20 seconds from unpacking to using for sure ).

[RalphM]

...when I actually install XY, the installer registers it on the system, so it doesn't pop up with a warning every time.

Which would mean there's some XY entries in the registry. Unless you opt to replace WE by XY permanently, I'm pretty sure XY doesn't leave any footprints there.

I'm always downloading the "Install"-versions and get two security messages during installation of the update, but that's all, no message when starting XY.

Home XP SP3, work XP SP2.

[zer0]

Which would mean there's some XY entries in the registry. Unless you opt to replace WE by XY permanently, I'm pretty sure XY doesn't leave any footprints there.

I'm always downloading the "Install"-versions and get two security messages during installation of the update, but that's all, no message when starting XY.

Home XP SP3, work XP SP2.

To the best of my knowledge, XY only leaves registry entries related to its uninstallation. I do not have any intention to completely replace WE with XY...yet

I, too, get Install versions more often and I do see two security screens. One is from WinZip when I try to run an EXE from an archive. The other one is from Windows alerting me to the fact that publisher of the installer could not be verified. No security screens appear once the installer launches.

I'd like to stress the fact that, in my situation, the warning about the publisher only appears after I run XYplorer.exe extracted from an archive of the No-install version. There is no such message post-install if I deploy an Install version.

[PeterH]

Running XP/SP3. Nothing like this from windows, neither for install- nor for no-install-version.
But I have a personal firewall (kerio, very old), this asks on 1st start after each installation for allowance of a changed program.
And on direct start from installation-program for allowance to start XY.
Both is as I want it to be...

[zer0]

Running XP/SP3. Nothing like this from windows, neither for install- nor for no-install-version.
But I have a personal firewall (kerio, very old), this asks on 1st start after each installation for allowance of a changed program.
And on direct start from installation-program for allowance to start XY.
Both is as I want it to be...

Perhaps you have it in your Group Policy settings not to check for publishers of EXE files. To check, do this:
1. Click Start–>Run and type gpedit.msc. Click OK
2. Go to User Configuration–>Administrative Templates–>Windows Components–>Attachment Manager
3. See if EXE is added to the “Inclusion list for moderate risk file types” setting.
If it's there then that's why you don't see the message.

Potentially, that's another way to mitigate the issue, but it will have a blanket action on all EXEs rather than just XYplorer.

[PeterH]

Perhaps you have it in your Group Policy settings not to check for publishers of EXE files.

Sorry: what's the default for this?

[nony]

It's related to code signing

http://www.comodo.com/business-security ... igning.php

Unless a developer wishes to spend few hundred bucks yearly you can't do anything.
BTW it could become a necessity for exe's in future.

[PeterH]

It's related to code signing

http://www.comodo.com/business-security ... igning.php

Unless a developer wishes to spend few hundred bucks yearly you can't do anything.
BTW it could become a necessity for exe's in future.

I don't understand...
If I write a small programm and compile a .exe, must I spend money to sign it before I can run it?
And a programmer would have to sign any version of .exe he wants to debug?
Good for him who earns the money, but for me and you?

So if I, for my PC, couldn't explicitely allow any explicite program to run, (a kind of "local signing" or so,) I think I would not want it.

[nony]

If I write a small programm and compile a .exe, must I spend money to sign it before I can run it?And a programmer would have to sign any version of .exe he wants to debug?
Good for him who earns the money, but for me and you?

Well unfortunately that's the true market scenario . You could call big companies dominance.
Well at some extent they are correct too. Considering the speed with which malware is increasing it's the right way. If exes's/dll's are signed then you would be sure that it came from the right place and hasn't been tempered.

It's bit off topic but Nokia S40 mobiles would limit .jar files operations unless it's digitally signed. So it's kinda future of software development.