Vista: Valid digital signatures?

April 2, 2008 8:59 PM

"The Publisher could not be verified" for a program I use routinely. How do I get Vista to shut up about it?

I have a lot of utilities and programs I use, some dating back to Win 95 days, a lot of which were created by hobbyists. Vista doesn't complain about any of them, except one. It's SmartRipper V2.41, and it's entirely possible that it's on a black list since it decrypts DVDs. Every time I run it with Vista Home Premium I get told the following in a popup:

"The publisher could not be verified. Are you sure you want to run this software?"

To run it I then have to push the "run" button. At the bottom it continues, "This file does not have a valid digital signature that verifies its publisher. You should only run software from publishers you trust." Which is peculiar because RTVReco and Netlab don't give me that, and I doubt either of them came from any kind of person with a "valid digital signature" since they were both hobbyist written. Nor does Batchname cause complaints.

Regardless, the question before us is this: is there anything I can do in terms of setting permission codes or flags or, as a last resort, mucking with registry entries, to tell Vista to stop bitching about this one program? It's getting on my nerves.

I tried setting the shortcut to "run as administrator" and that didn't prevent the popup. And alas, Vista has implemented a new kind of popup that RTVReco can't see, so I can't use RTVReco to push the "run" button for me.

(I'd also love an updated program that can auto-push selected popup buttons under Vista, if anyone knows of such a thing. RTVReco goes back to 1995 or so. A Vista-wide auto-button-pusher would solve this problem nicely, and I'd even be willing to pay for it. By the way, I am not interested in suggestions for alternatives to SmartRipper. I like it fine and I want to use it, not something else. I just want the stupid popups to stop.)

posted by Class Goat to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Is this program running from a mapped drive?
posted by demiurge at 9:19 PM on April 2

You could try disabling User Account Control, but that might be a little too drastic.
posted by mhp at 9:24 PM on April 2

I had this problem with a program I ran over a mapped drive. Try going to Control Panel / Internet Options/ Security/Local Intranet/Sites, uncheck the first box, then check the next three.
posted by aerotive at 9:24 PM on April 2

MHP, I don't really want to disable UAC. Besides which, I don't think that's the issue here, because setting the shortcut to run the program as Administrator doesn't make the popup go away. Disabling UAC effectively means everything runs with Administrator privilege, but that's pretty much all it does.

The program is running from C:\Program Files. Last time I checked, C: wasn't a "mapped drive". (I don't use mapped drives routinely.)

Also, setting the shortcut to tell Vista to run it in WinXP SP2 compatibility mode doesn't change anything.

I usually use a shortcut to run it, but directly invoking it from its home at C:\Program Files\SmartRipper also makes that popup occur.
posted by Class Goat at 9:42 PM on April 2

I just downloaded it, and it ran without any popups.
maybe try redownloading it?
posted by mhp at 10:08 PM on April 2

I'm a bit leery of doing that, for fear that the new version I might get might be bugged with something dreadful.

But as I look at its properties, there's a "Security" thing on the bottom that says "This file came from another computer and might be blocked to help protect this computer".

There's an "unblock" button, and I can click it, but it doesn't seem to work. When I close the properties and open them again, it gives me the same security message.
posted by Class Goat at 11:20 PM on April 2

Another way to fix this is, if you have a drive formatted with FAT32, move the file there then back. That will strip out the embedded zone information.
posted by aerotive at 11:04 AM on April 3

That's a weird idea, but I don't have. Would burning it to a CD and reading it back do the same thing?
posted by Class Goat at 11:14 AM on April 3

Most flash drives are formatted FAT32. I'm not entirely sure the metadata would be lost; Macs at least work hard to maintain their metadata on flash drives. You could copy it to a flash drive then take that flash drive to a mac or linux box and blow any anything "metadatay" though I don't know what that would look like for Vista.

Also, see if the file is locked or marked read only. That may be why you cannot unset the unblock button.
posted by chairface at 11:59 AM on April 3

No, the reason I couldn't set the "unblock" was that I forgot to hit "apply" afterwards. (Sheesh.)

And now it doesn't bring up that idiotic prompt. Thanks, everyone!
posted by Class Goat at 1:53 PM on April 3