This is the kind of stuff that drives me absolutely bonkers about Windows. I run Console as a command prompt replacement, and I just installed it on a brand new Vista machine. Unfortunately, every time I ran it, I’d get a security warning similar to this:
Unbeknownst to me, Windows helpfully attaches security information to files that you download, using an obscure NTFS streams mechanism about which I’d never heard. As long as this file was flagged as a potential risk, opening it would bring up the blasted nanny dialog, regardless of how many times I unchecked the box for “Always ask before opening this file.”
Popping open the properties for the console.exe file revealed a Security section that I’d never seen before, at the bottom of the dialog:
Unfortunately, clicking the Unblock button did nothing. And to add further insult, re-opening the properties revealed that Windows had silently undone my handiwork; the Unblock button was still there.
Much googling later revealed that I might be able to hack around this by copying the file to a non-NTFS partition, then copying it back. I did exactly that, copying it over to my Ubuntu server and back. The Unblock button was still there, but this time when I clicked it, it stayed gone. Problem solved.
The most annoying part of this morning’s jaunt into overprotective Windows security is that I can’t reproduce the problem. At all. I’ve re-downloaded Console in an attempt to recreate the error and get some screen shots for this blog post, but the newly downloaded executable behaves as if it’s always been on my hard drive. No security messages, no silly Unblock button, no evidence at all to support the last hour or so of frustrated clicking and searching. When I say that Windows makes me crazy, this is exactly what I’m talking about.
