Security warnings after update (XP Home SP2)

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Updated my Windows today and installed IE7. Don’t know whether it’s a coincidence, but I now get Security Warnings from Windows when I launch my email and Usenet client programs (Pegasus and Agent). Prior to today, these warnings were never seen. How do I eliminate these warning messages?

Updates applied:
KB925454
KB923689
KB926255
KB925398

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What is the exact text of the messages? It is probably some IE 7 configuration. Microsoft tightened up the default security considerable in IE 7.

Joe

--Joe

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“Do you want to run this file?”
Screenshot is attached.

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Forte International Software Do you use any of their software ??

Agent appears to be on your system and trying to access the internet.

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Yes, it publishes a usenet reader called Agent. I have used the product for about 10 years.

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If that’s the case, then I’d suspect that it’s safe to allow that to run. IE7 has been causing many issues of this nature on peoples computers and it seems to be related to the increased security IE7 brings to the table.

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Try the following:
– Right-click the agent.exe file (in Z:systemagent) in Windows Explorer.
– Select Properties from the popup menu.
– If there is a button labeled Unblock near the bottom, click it.
Does this help?

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Yes it helps, but raises more questions. Getting into really unfamiliar territory for me.

There is no button labelled Unblock. However there is a tab named Digital Signatures with a Details button. Clicking the Details button, I can see that the certificate was issued to Forte Internet Software, Inc. and issued by Comodo Code Signing Co. Apparently it was valid until 2006-12-14. That expiry date is almost one week ago, and I am certain that I ran the software during the intervening period without seeing the security warning. If the certificate expired after 2006-12-14, that alone was insufficient to trigger a warning. I am pretty sure it has something to do with upgrading to IE7.

On the other hand, the other affected program does not have a Digital Signatures tab on its properties page, so there was nothing to expire!

Just noticed that the warning messages are subtly different. For the program with the expired certificate, it says “do you want to run this software” without any reference to a digital certificate. However for the program without any certificate, the warning is “the publisher could not be verified”, with additional verbage in the fine print that it does not have a digital certificate. The distinction is easy to overlook.

Both these programs are stored on my Z: drive, which is a mapped network drive. Does that mean it is affected by the security settings applied to the “Local Intranet” zone in the Internet Options of Internet Explorer? If so, is there a setting that I can tell Windows to override the defaults, and allow any program to be run from the Local Intranet without issuing a warning message?

As always, thanks for your help!

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See Open file – Security Warning appears when you run a file from network share.

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Bingo!

All that was required was to uncheck the “Automatically detect intranet network” checkbox as mentioned in method#1 of the link. IE7 beta was specifically mentioned — seems like a bug that was allowed to continue into the final release. Unchecking the chckbox activated three other checkboxes that had previously been grayed-out.

You’ve done it once again. Thanks very much!

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