How to make windows stop downloading files as blocked

If you wish to manually open a blocked file, right-click on the downloaded file and then select Properties. But, imagine you have to do this every time you download a file—that can be annoying and time-consuming. If you often download files from the internet or receive files as email attachments, you might want to completely stop your PC from blocking your files.

To stop Windows 10 from blocking you from opening your files, you need to prevent it from adding Zone Information to the files you download. You must be signed in as an administrator or you should request administrator rights to be able to stop downloaded files from being blocked. From there, type "Regedit" and click Enter.

A User Account Control prompt will pop up. When this prompt appears, click the Yes button to continue. If the Attachments key is absent within the Policies key, you'll have to create it. To do this, right-click on the Policies key, click New , click Key. This will create a new key, which you should then name "Attachments".

If you find that the Attachments key is already present, you can skip to the next step. Name it "SaveZoneInformation" and click Enter. Finally, to disable the Attachment Manager in Windows 10, double-click on the newly-created SaveZoneInformation value and change its value data to 1.

Click OK to finish. When you complete these steps, close the Registry Editor and restart your computer to apply the changes.

From here onward, any file you download will no longer attach Zone Information to the file's alternate data stream. This will allow you to open your files without any difficulties. From here, on the right-side, double-click on the SaveZoneInformation value and change its value data to 3.

If you're using a Windows 10 edition that has the Local Group Policy Editor, you can configure the Attachment Manager using the steps indicated here. In the right pane of the Attachment Manager, double-click on the Do not preserve zone information in file attachments policy to edit the Zone Information settings. Click the Apply button to save the changes and then click OK.

If you download files and somehow doubt their credibility, you can always open them in secure isolated environments to ensure that your PC and data are safe. Do you want to test new suspicious programs without the risk of harming your Windows 10 PC? He enjoys doing research and writing insightful content for tech companies. When you download any file form the internet and save it to NTFS drive, the windows operating system adds specific metadata to these downloaded files.

These metadata are considered to be attachments. This is the default operation carried out by the windows OS. This is an annoying default setting of windows 10 OS that prevents you from opening or executing the downloaded files directly. Metadata is knows as data that describes other data.

The metadata added as attachment to the downloaded file is known as Zone Information. The Zone information is an invisible file stored along with the downloaded file in form of an alternate data stream. Both the downloaded file and metadata is stored in the same location. Hence , when the File explorer opens the file it comes across the attached Zone information stored in the same location and checks to see if it came from outside.

Running this app might put your PC at risk. As you disable the smart screen message another dialogue box shows up with the option to run or cancel. Now the user has to manually unblock the downloaded files. This can be done with a Right click on the file and selecting the properties option on the menu.

To unblock every file in this method is pain strikingly slow process. Let us instead focus on the preventive measure and stop the windows from adding additional Zone information.