"This file came from another computer…"
Another helpful security feature that can become an annoyance: if you get a file from online (or another network) you may see the message "This file came from another computer and might be blocked to help protect this computer". It's trying to help you, but sometimes we just don't want that much help!
This happens because zone information is being preserved within the file. This identifies where the file came from and kicks off warnings as appropriate. There are a couple of ways to deal with this:
Disable the feature:
From the Start/Search box, Run box or console window type: GPEDIT.MSC to bring up the Group Policy Object editor. Navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Attachment Manager. Here you will find a couple of policies related to this feature, but to disable it you'll want to ENABLE the policy called " "Do not preserve zone information in file attachments"
Remove the zone information from the file:
If you save the file to a FAT32 partition, the zone ID information cannot be saved (unsupported). At this point the file will be clear of the problem and you can run it without the warnings.
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Comments
Bob,
Nice tip! Unfortunately in Microsoft's drive to make the OS secure and easy-to-use at the same time we get a lot of messages that are not really a cause for concern. My fear is that users will become galvanized to the plethora of security warnings and messages and not actually stop to understand them thus rendering them useless. People need to be informed and trained.
Cheers!
Trustedtoolkit
Posted by: Trustedtoolkit | July 5, 2007 8:21 PM
I could not agree more Trustedtoolkit, clicking "OK" to pop-up messages without reading is already a problem today, with so many more messages it will only get worse. MS is trying to address this with the new "darkening of the screen" thing they do for some key security messages, but this will only work until everyone gets used to it as well!
Posted by: Bob Kelly | July 9, 2007 1:36 PM
I have many video clips in many folders that have this same warning and I have disabled it as adivised above.
But now I'd like to know how to change this attribute setting in the properties of all such files in a folder (when I right click on a give file) without having to do one at a time. Any suggestions?
Posted by: Rocco | September 22, 2007 2:48 AM
Rocco,
I'm not sure what you are referring to where you have to perform the action on each individual file. Aside from disabling the feature as described, you could copy all the files to a FAT/FAT32 partition and back again (say a formatted thumb drive or something?)
Hope this helps-- if not, please try to explain further.
Bob
Posted by: Bob Kelly | September 26, 2007 5:34 PM