Originally Posted By: daves66nova
I have an old Pavilion a1630N that i want to put in my son's room for a game he likes to play. whenever I d/l any program,it'll download but not open whenever I double click on it. I just reformatted this comp yesterday. It does have XP on it. I am using the latest version of Mozilla and it does work great with it ,it just does not open programs. I know that I can get a newer comp, but this is just for his room and for a game. What can i try?
This feature is also used by newer versions of Windows as well. Personally, I have encountered this in Vista, 7, and have read that users experience this in 8 and 10 as well. Please click the links below for explanation. They will explain the various reasons/applications/parts of windows that cause this to happen with some downloaded (or even all downloaded) files. Also, there is an app out there and other how-to's that explain how to permanently disable this from happening. (just be aware it will reduce security to some extent depending on what you are downloading)
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This is driven by the alternate data streams. Windows flags files as potentially untrusted if they have been downloaded (for example) from the internet zone and will disable execution.
As a side note, Sysinternals provide a free tool called 'streams' (via Microsoft) which allows you to remove (including recursively) all alternate streams from a file / directory.
As a second side-note, the reason Windows does this is because it's a fairly simple way to construct a trojan or virus. As discussion on this briefly here.
In 2009, the alternate data stream was used by a click fraud Trojan named FFSearcher. It used the stream name “Zone.Identifier” which is a stream name that Microsoft uses to mark executable files downloaded by Internet Explorer. Instead of a simple zone identifier however, the Trojan implanted a DLL file that contained the Trojan’s code.
How to permanently unblock files that ca...ked Files in IE
Simple Explanation & How To Unblock
Best Explanation & Solution
Hope this helps.
