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Windows SmartScreen Notice

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© 2026 Obsvra. This document describes SpiceGrinder and is provided to help you evaluate and use it. It is not a license to reproduce, adapt, or use this material to build a competing product or service. Full terms: the SpiceGrinder EULA.

SpiceGrinder’s Windows build isn’t code-signed yet. A real code-signing certificate is in progress but still some weeks out; rather than delay the beta for it, this build ships unsigned in the meantime. Because of that, the first time you run it, Windows SmartScreen will show a warning instead of just launching it. This is expected, not a sign anything is broken.

What you’ll see

Running SpiceGrinder-Free.exe (or the MSI installer) shows a full-screen blue dialog:

Windows protected your PC

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

with only an OK button visible at first — clicking it just closes the dialog, it doesn’t run the app or block the next step.

How to run it anyway

Recommended — More info, then Run anyway:

  1. When the “Windows protected your PC” dialog appears, click More info (a small link, easy to miss — it’s just below the warning text, above the OK button).
  2. The dialog expands to show the app name and Run anyway button. Click it.
  3. Windows remembers this choice for this specific file — running it again later works without the warning reappearing.

If you’d rather clear it before running at all (advanced/technical users): the warning comes from a “Mark of the Web” flag Windows attaches to anything downloaded from the internet — the same mechanism SmartScreen checks. Removing it skips the dialog entirely:

Unblock-File -Path "C:\path\to\SpiceGrinder-Free.exe"

Or via File Explorer: right-click the file → Properties → check Unblock at the bottom of the General tab → OK.

Why this happens

SmartScreen builds trust in a given publisher/binary over time, from real download and clean run volume — even a properly code-signed app from a brand-new certificate can still show a warning on its first runs, just a less alarming one than this. SpiceGrinder’s beta build skips code-signing entirely for now rather than wait weeks for a certificate that wouldn’t fully eliminate this warning on day one anyway; real code-signing is planned for a future release, at which point this notice (and the warning itself, once enough clean runs accumulate) fades away.