Defender won't allows unzipping of compressed files

[Guest]

My system is Windows XP SP2, 2.56 Ghz, 512MB RAM. HDD is currently NTFS,
having been converted from FAT32 about one year ago.

I recently installed Windows Defender, and have been unable to extract files
from compressed folders using the Windows Extraction Wizard. The drive will
run for a few seconds, then a dialog appears which says "Windows has blocked
access to these files to help protect your security." I follow the help
link, and learn that I should unblock the file in its properties window, but
this option does not exist on any of my files.

If I uninstall Windows Defender and reboot, then everything works fine as it
did before. If I reinstall WD, then this problem reappears, so I am quite
certain WD is the culprit. I have tried deselecting the real time
protections, and even turning off WD, but nothing works to allow me to unzip
files except for a complete unistall.

There seems to be no difference between files I've had for a while, since
well before I installed WD, and newly downloaded files.

I will note that the newly downloaded files are downloaded with Firefox.
When I attempt to download with Internet Explorer now, the ZIP file instantly
dissapears without any prompting or dialog. This is true even if I turn WD
completely off. I even tried turning it off then rebooting to make sure it
was truly off, and still IE won't properly download.

I will also note that if I unistall WD, reboot, then reinstall, there is no
problem until after the next reboot/restart of Windows. It is like WD isn't
fully "there" until after a reboot, even though it doesn't prompt for that
during installation.

I would very much like to continue to us WD, but I frequently download and
use ZIP archives of files and programs, so this issue must be resolved for me
to continue to use and recommend it.

I will note that I have access to two other computers with WD installed, and
do not have this problem. Both are similarly Windows XP SP2 with all
updates. The only obvious difference is that both of those computers were
originally formatted to NTFS, rather than having been converted from FAT32.

 

[John Allen]

No problem here
XP SP2, 1.8 Ghz, 1GB RAM
I use SP2 built in Firewall and VET AV
Maybe there is a conflict with some other software on your comp.
John Allen

 

[Guest]

No problem here
XP SP2, 1.8 Ghz, 1GB RAM
I use SP2 built in Firewall and VET AV
Maybe there is a conflict with some other software on your comp.
John Allen

This is unlikely, since this computer and the other two have virtually
identical software installed. I don't use anything exotic, don't do registry
hacking or anything like that. My experimenting clearly indicates the
problem is with WD, and I posted here primarily as a bug report, of a
possible problem with computers that have been converted from FAT32.

Also, I had used the previous "Windows Antispyware Beta" on this same
machine, and no problem was encountered with Zipped files. The ONLY change
is from WAS to WD.

 

[Mike Treit [Msft]]

Can you give me the exact set of steps you can take to reproduce the
problem?

I have some ideas about how this behavior might happen, but I am unable to
reproduce it currently.

Thanks

-Mike

 

[Bill Sanderson]

I know of perhaps half a dozen other users seeing similar symptoms--I
haven't noted the unzip issue, but the download issue is posted here a
number of times--you are hitting a real bug, I believe.

--

 

[Bill Sanderson]

I can give you remote desktop access to a machine exhibiting the download
failure, if you'd like.

Steve Dodson can probably vouch for me, and I've done this in the process of
other betas in the past.

Or--if you have an info-gathering tool you'd like me to run, I can do
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Mike Treit [Msft]]

Please try deleting the following registry key and let me know if that fixes
the problem:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Discardable\PostSetup\Component
Categories\{56FFCC30-D398-11D0-B2AE-00A0C908FA49}

Thanks

-Mike

 

[Bullwinkle Moose]

See my earlier post. It's more pervasive that just an unzipping problem.

I forgot to mention that I was unable do download zip files altogether.

Regards,
Werner

 

[Bill Sanderson]

I've replied to your post later in the group. I've seen this bug on my own
system--so I know what it does, although I hadn't noticed the zip problem.
I had an additional issue nobody else has noted: My home page is set to
www.nytimes.com and about 90% of the time I could not click a link off the
home page and reach the actual story. Now that my system is fixed, that
works again.

Microsoft has a fix for this issue, but it isn't simple enough to just say
do these three steps and it'll be fixed.

I'd be happy to try working this through with anybody here who has this
syndrome, but I can't claim any success stories yet.

--