Get rid of “The Publisher could not be verified. Are you sure you want to run this software”?

Question

Can I stop "The Publisher could not be verified. Are you sure you want to run this software"? from popuping up when I run an exe? It is really annoying :) Will it require me to completely disable DEP?

(PS I'm running windows 7 32 bit)

Answer 1

To disable this dialogue box for ALL .exe files, you can add the following key to your registry:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Associations]
"LowRiskFileTypes"=".exe

Note: this is not advisable, as it opens up your computer to other risks.

Other than that, ClickOff is your friend (a more general approach to such annoyances :)

ClickOff has been written out of a personal need - like most programs here. Questions like "are you sure you want to exit the program?" made me go insane after having seen them a dozen of times.

ClickOff is developed to be the Swiss Army knife for window handling, not just a simple popup blocker.

Here are some key features:

• Automatically clicks button on error messages that come up all the time.
• Intuitive user interface.
• Closes browser popups
• Minimizes or maximizes windows
• Delay times can be set to allow user intervention
• Single buttons can be disabled temporarily
• False clicks are avoided by taking the message text into the proccess of detecting.
• To close windows that contain certain words, wildcards can be used
• The scanning speed can be set
• Can be disabled for a short period or permanently without having to be exited.
• Has very low system resource needs, takes about 1 sec. to load and doesn't slow down the system while running.

ClickOff is freeware.

Answer 2

When I download an EXE from the internet, it prompts me as you indicate. However, if I put an EXE on the desktop (for example) and run it, there's a checkbox that allows me to say "don't prompt me for this again". You might not get additional checkbox if you're running the program out of the program files directory. In this case, I believe you can turn off UAC, reboot, run the program, set the checkbox, and then turn back on UAC.