When Downloaded CHM's Just Don't Work.
This is more a note to myself, but you're welcome to remember this tip for yourself. I read about this last month on someones blog (the solution to this problem) but buggered if I could find it now that I need to remember what to do again.
Each month the MSDN mag comes out - and in downloadable CHM format to boot. This is wonderful. This month's has just come out, and I was hit with the same problem that I encountered last month.
If you're running XP with SP2, or Win2k3 with SP1, you'll likely have had security update 896358 applied to your machine. If so, then you've probably got this problem. When you download a CHM, windows might decide it's unsafe:
But even if you click Open, it doesn't render any HTML. Stupid bloody security update!
This problem has been documented under knowledge base article 902225. The problem here is that there's two workarounds suggested, and the first is just damn stupid. For some reason they're happy to suggest unblocking all CHM files that are downloaded from the internet, and allowing to just run every time (by unticking the check box in the above picture). Is it just me, or is this a really bad thing?
The second work around is more appropriate. If you right click on the specific file and hit properties:
You can click the Unblock button. This allows this single file to be trusted, but all other CHMs get left alone, the way they should be.
With all the efforts that went into SP2 (and 2k3SP1) I think they should be more careful about just advising people to trust all content again. Sure, for some people you might need to untick the box (if you deal with a lot of these files) but they should have suggested it second, with a note that this is possibly insecure.
Right, I'm off to read the mag now :)
Listening to: hey johnny park - foo fighters - (4:08)