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Thread: [RESOLVED] exe install file gets blocked?

  1. #1

    Thread Starter
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    Resolved [RESOLVED] exe install file gets blocked?

    I packaged my vb6 program with ActualInstaller. When I run the install from my PC, it installs just fine.

    But, if I upload it to my website, download it, then double click on it to run the install, my antivirus blocks it. I tried this on 3 computers, all with different anti-virus software, and each of them do the same thing saying it cant be trusted.

    Now, if i package the program using the P&K wizard, upload it to my site, download it and run the install, then it works just fine.

    Any ideas?

  2. #2
    Fanatic Member 2kaud's Avatar
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    Re: exe install file gets blocked?

    What digital signing is ActualInstaller doing?

    What version(s) of Windows are you trying?
    All advice is offered in good faith only. You are ultimately responsible for the effects of your programs and the integrity of the machines they run on. Anything I post, code snippets, advice, etc is licensed as Public Domain https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

    C++23 Compiler: Microsoft VS2022 (17.6.5)

  3. #3

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    Re: exe install file gets blocked?

    huh, seems software packaged with the old P&D install better with no warnings.....

  4. #4
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    Re: exe install file gets blocked?

    One problem with 3rd party legacy scripted installers is that they often use non-standard self-extraction technologies. This can cause antivirus software to flag them as malware because they make use of "dropper" extraction techniques that the antivirus product doesn't have on its whitelist.

    With time and popularity, if the 3rd party packages are determined to be benign the antivirus makers may eventually add a recognition signature (unrelated to cryptographic code signing) and a whitelist entry for it. This can take a long time for a newcomer to the market.

    This "Actual Installer" seems to suffer from that very issue.


    Your best bet if the well known and whitelisted PDW package format is somehow inadequate would be to use a packager that can create MSI packages instead. Ideally that would be the first thing you choose anyway. Everything else only works via appcompat anyway, since legacy setups have been deprecated for a very long time.

    The PDW was replaced for most purposes long ago by the Visual Studio 6.0 Installer 1.1 (VSI 1.1). The only thing the PDW is really useful for anymore is creating IE control packages, and for the most part IE blocks ActiveX controls anyway and has for quite some time.

    If you have VSI 1.1 use that. If you don't (Microsoft stopped hosting the downloads quite a while ago) then look for a similar 3rd party packager that creates Windows Installer packages.

  5. #5

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    Re: exe install file gets blocked?

    Thank you

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