Disable "These files might be harmful to your computer" warning?

Question

I keep getting this irritating warning when copying files over the network:

These files might be harmful to your computer

Your internet security settings suggest that one or more files may be harmful. Do you want to use it anyway?

I am copying a file from \\192.168.0.197\c$ (home server) to my local machine which is at \\192.168.0.4.

How do I turn off this meaningless "warning"?

Answer 1

I found a fix by changing "internet options" -- so I guess Windows is detecting the "internet" as my own network.. sigh.

• Click Start / Control Panel / Internet Options
• Click Security tab.
• Click Local Intranet
• Click Sites button.
• Click Advanced button.
• Enter the IP Address of the other machine or server (wildcards are allowed) and click Add
• Click Close, then OK, then OK again.
• Disconnect, and reconnect the network drive

This worked for me, but it's a bummer I have to manually enter IPs here.. it would be nice if Windows could detect this is a local network file copy and skip the irritating (and pointless) warning about "dangerous" files.

Sidenotes:

• If you are using a DNS name (i.e. FQDN) to map the network drive, adding the IP address of the server to the zone will not work. You will need to add the DNS name (i.e. FQDN), and vice-versa.
• When adding an IP address, you can use wildcards like so: 192.168.1.*
• When adding a DNS name (i.e. FQDN), you can use wildcards like so: *.example.com

Answer 2

Using Windows 7, I added my IP address with a wildcard:

10.55.25.*

Now all the ip's in this range are part of the "Local Intranet".

Answer 3

If you want to do this in Group Policy, this quote may be helpful to you.

You can control this with Group Policy, as well. Use gpedit.msc and drill down to

User Configuration → Policies → Administrative Templates → Windows Components → Internet Explorer → Internet Control Panel → Security Page

Enable "Intranet Zone Template" with the Low option.

Then enable "Site to Zone Assignment List" and use the Show button to add your "sites" (servername, servername.domain, ipaddress - the values you enter depend on what name or IP you use to access the share) with a value of 1.

Lastly - and this is the most important step - drill down one folder in gpedit to "Intranet Zone" and enable for "Show security warning for potentially unsafe files", choosing Enable from the drop-down.

Close gpedit, reboot or run gpupdate /force and enjoy no more annoying Windows Security dialogues!

From the bottom of http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/fi-FI/w7itprosecurity/thread/35ca8f9c-5e69-4b7f-a002-0d72fa0dc14b

Answer 4

I have been getting the same error recently, and found a way to disable this warning forever (I know what files I want to open, so yes, I am sure I want to disable this warning...):

• go to Internet Settings (in Internet Explorer)
• go to the "Security" tab
• click on "Custom level" (with "Internet" selected = first icon)
• in the "Miscellaneous" part, select "Enable (not secure)" for the option "Launching applications and unsafe files (not secure)"
• click "OK" and then apply the changes; you'll have a warning asking if you're sure you want to do this (you'll have to say yes)

And that's it. :) Have fun.

Answer 5

I did a procmon and found where the settings are stored in the registry - this is for my 192.168.1.* network:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMap\Ranges\Range1]
"*"=dword:00000001
":Range"="192.168.1.*"

This is for my \\NAS server:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMap\Domains\nas]
"file"=dword:00000001

This is how it looks in the internet settings control panel:

Answer 6

I believe you wouldn't get the warning if you used the netbios name of your home server instead of the ip address. If you use the ip address or say the fully qualified dns name of the remote computer it doesn't recognize it as being in the intranet zone. the other option as mentioned earlier is to manually add it to the intranet zone list.

Answer 7

We recently put in a new server using DFS and I was having this same error. I ended up putting in:

" \\\servername.local.?"

After clicking add, it then showed:

file://*.servername.local.

I tried the * verses the ?, but that was not allowed.

Answer 8

Note that if you are encountering this error when trying to copy files from a WSL "network share", opened via \\wsl$ adding the IP of the WSL share does not work. You need to specifically uncheck Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone and then add wsl.localhost. Once you close and open the site list, you'll see that it changes it to file://*.wsl.localhost.

To be clear, you add this string in the same location mentioned in other answers:

Control Panel > Network and Internet > Internet Options > Security > Local intranet > Sites > Advanced

Adding some related terms that might help someone find this in the future: Windows Subsystem for Linux WSL2 \\wsl$

Answer 9

Adding these two lines (without changing the default Local Intranet settings) is a quick fix:

file://10.*.*.*
10.*.*.*

You need to disconnect and reconnect shares for this to work.

Answer 10

I tried Everything Above Said but Using the Reg Code Mentioned below Did it for me.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMap\ProtocolDefaults]
@=""
"http"=dword:00000000
"ftp"=dword:00000000
"file"=dword:00000000

And Restart after that!

Answer 11

The other solutions here didn't work for me on Windows 7, but I found one that worked: remove Internet Explorer through Add/Remove Programs and then Adjust Windows Features. Unclick Internet Explorer 8. No more nag dialog!

Answer 12

This is what worked for me;

Click Start / Control Panel / Internet Options

Click Security tab.

Click Local Intranet

Click Sites button.

Click Advanced button.

Where it says "Add this website to the Zone:" you want to switch to Explorer and copy the URL in the address bar; Eg if your network drive is mapped to your N: drive the address you copy would be "N:\" or if it's a network share it would be "\\Sharename", and click Add.

These will show as something like; "file://192.168.100.123" and "file://Sharename"

Click Close, then OK, then OK again.

If "Require server verification..." is ticked, untick it.

Answer 13

Faster Way:

Open the Internet Properties dialog box, go to the Security tab, and click on "Trusted sites":

• Select the "Sites" button
• Enter your private domain (i.e. "192.168..")
• uncheck "Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone"
• click Add to close the dialog box
• then Apply the changes

Answer 14

In my case, I only wished to disable this warning for specific network servers rather than the entire local network.

The procedure boils down to the following:

• Add the specific network share servers to Trusted Sites
  • This gets rid of the "This file is in a location outside your local network" warning
• Allow running executables without warning for the Trusted Sites zone
  • This gets rid of the "this file type can potentially harm your computer" warning

---

• Open Control panel -> Internet options; or Ctrl-R -> run inetcpl.cpl. Go to the Security tab and select "Trusted Sites"

  

• Sites -> uncheck "Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone" if checked -> "Add this website to the zone:" -> copy-paste \\<name or IP address>. You can also paste an entire UNC path here (only the server part of it will be used). -> Add

  

• Custom level... -> enable "Launching applications and unsafe files". Alternatively, press Default level and select "Medium-low" or "Low".