Disable Blocked File Protection Control in Windows Vista
In my neverending quest to make Vista more usable, I finally caved and took the time to figure out how to disable Blocked File Protection Control. This “feature” requires you to unblock files you download before they are usable (for the most part). This is a bad decision in my opinion – I decided to download a file and of course I’m going to want to work with it. I don’t want to figure how how to unblock before I can use it. What a pain – anyway enough with the rant.
If you want to be able to use your files after you download them, you’ll need to either use the Group Policy Editor described here in as Method #3 or edit the registry.
Unfortunately I happen to be running Windows Vista Home Premium on one of my systems – this means no gpedit. The entry we need to set is:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Attachments\SaveZoneInformationThis value needs to be a DWORD set to 1. You can enter this manually or download the reg file and “Unblock” your last file! Be sure to close all instances of Internet Explorer or reboot your computer after making the change to your registry.