File Protocol links (file://) - Functionality no longer supported...Work around?

[Paul Engel]

The file protocol links (file://), according to Microsoft's KB article
330913, (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330913), is
no longer supported for security reasons.

I have an application I have written that sends a link to a user to a file
on their network that launches an application for them. Obviously, the
system is now obsolted by this change. Does ANYONE know of a work-around for
this? Is there a registry setting that can be changed so that my users can
regain the use of this mission-critical piece of our workflow? OR, does
anyone know of a clever idea on how I can do this using alternative
solutions?

I thought about emailing them a .bat file, but, of course, those get
filtered out...and opening that would create a greater threat than the one
Microsoft just eliminated with this change.

Any help would be appreciated.

Paul

 

[Daniel Crichton]

Paul wrote on Thu, 8 Sep 2005 10:44:11 -0400:

The file protocol links (file://), according to Microsoft's KB article
330913, (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330913),
is no longer supported for security reasons.

I have an application I have written that sends a link to a user to a file
on their network that launches an application for them. Obviously, the
system is now obsolted by this change. Does ANYONE know of a work-around
for this? Is there a registry setting that can be changed so that my users
can regain the use of this mission-critical piece of our workflow? OR,
does anyone know of a clever idea on how I can do this using alternative
solutions?

I thought about emailing them a .bat file, but, of course, those get
filtered out...and opening that would create a greater threat than the one
Microsoft just eliminated with this change.

Any help would be appreciated.

As the article says, you can fix this by ensuring your site is listed in the
Trusted Zone of the client machines. Assuming you have some sort of control
over the IE settings on those machines it shouldn't be too hard to sort this
out.

Dan

 

[Paul Engel]

Thanks. That fixed it for those that are using this on the server. I had
been testing this on my PC, so the path was to my c:/ drive. I can't add
that to my trusted site. I tried https://c:/, which it takes as https://c
and as https://localhost, which it accepts, but I can't get the link to
work.

Any ideas on how to add my local drive to the list of trusted sites. It
requires that the line begin w/ https://

Thanks for your help...hope you know a clever solution.

Paul

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE]

Thanks. That fixed it for those that are using this on the server. I
had been testing this on my PC, so the path was to my c:/ drive. I
can't add that to my trusted site. I tried https://c:/, which it
takes as https://c and as https://localhost, which it accepts, but I
can't get the link to work.

Any ideas on how to add my local drive to the list of trusted sites.
It requires that the line begin w/ https://

Thanks for your help...hope you know a clever solution.

Uncheck the option at the bottom of that window that tells it only to accept
https sites.

--
Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE
Please respond in Newsgroup only. Do not send email
http://www.fjsmjs.com
Protect your PC
http://www.microsoft.com./athome/security/protect/default.aspx
http://defendingyourmachine.blogspot.com/

 

[Paul Engel]

That's great. But, I can't figure out what to add to allow the following
example:

file://c:/x.txt

Could you please give me an example of what I would type into the text box
to add to the list. I keep getting an error message indicating that I'm
using a wildcard. I've tried:

c:/
file://c:/
File//C
c:

etc.

It would be great if I could see an example that would work in IE so I could
adapt it for my purposes.

Thanks,
Paul

 

[Daniel Crichton]

Paul wrote on Thu, 8 Sep 2005 14:07:46 -0400:

Thanks. That fixed it for those that are using this on the server. I had
been testing this on my PC, so the path was to my c:/ drive. I can't add
that to my trusted site. I tried https://c:/, which it takes as https://c
and as https://localhost, which it accepts, but I can't get the link to
work.

Any ideas on how to add my local drive to the list of trusted sites. It
requires that the line begin w/ https://

Thanks for your help...hope you know a clever solution.

If it's being loaded from the hard drive, it shouldn't need a Trusted Site
entry as it should automatically be treated as a "local" file and therefore
trusted.

Dan

 

[Paul Engel]

Nope! Microsoft had killed that. See the originally posted KB article.