AutoHotkey Community

Hi all!

When I try to run AutoHotkey64.exe (Version 2.0.12) without setup, I get the following error.

Windows protected your PC
Microsoft Defender SmartScreen prevented an unrecognized app from starting. Running this app might put your PC at risk.
Unknown publisher.

How come? With the old version 1, opening the exe would open the guide (CHM file). I would also try installation, but in the past the ahk2exe module had triggered the antivirus. It was probably a false positive, but this had created problems since the computer is in my management but not owned by me. So I would not want to take that risk and was trying to use the AutoHotkey64.exe without running the setup.

Thanks for the help!

steve88 wrote: ↑ When I try to run AutoHotkey64.exe (Version 2.0.12) without setup, I get the following error.

Windows protected your PC
Microsoft Defender SmartScreen prevented an unrecognized app from starting. Running this app might put your PC at risk.
Unknown publisher.

How come?

Because false positives are a thing, and antivirus companies are not incentivized to report only true findings of malicious code. This has been discussed ad nausem here.

Locking this thread. You can continue this discussion at the linked thread if you wish, but please -- not if it's just going to be asking questions that have been asked and answered.

This is not a virus detection and should not be reported to Microsoft as a false positive. This is just the normal over-cautious behaviour of SmartScreen, warning about an unsigned file that was sourced from the Internet and has not yet built up reputation (because it is new). The same thing sometimes happened with new v1 releases.

SmartScreen is only invoked when you run a program which is marked as having come from the Internet; i.e. AutoHotkey64.exe is marked because you extracted it from a zip you downloaded from the Internet. During a normal installation, setup.exe would pass through SmartScreen, but the files it installs would not. Consequently, setup.exe builds up a reputation faster than AutoHotkey64.exe and other files included in the installation.

I have confirmed that AutoHotkey64.exe currently triggers SmartScreen if it is extracted from a zip downloaded from the Internet and not unblocked in the file's properties. I have also confirmed that AutoHotkey_2.0.12_setup.exe does not currently trigger a SmartScreen prompt.

I'll leave it to @boiler to decide whether to unlock the thread.

I unlocked it in in case anyone wants to commend given lexikos’ insights.