If Windows has just shown you a blue box reading “Windows protected your PC” after downloading one of our tools, nothing is wrong with your computer and nothing is wrong with the file. This page explains exactly what that warning means, why our downloads trigger it, and how to verify for yourself that the file you have is the file we published.
What the warning actually says
Microsoft Defender SmartScreen checks every executable you download against a reputation database. If it has not seen that exact file, from that exact publisher, enough times before, it shows the warning. It is not telling you the file is malicious. It is telling you the file is unfamiliar.
That distinction matters, because reputation is earned by download volume and by a paid code-signing certificate. A free utility from a small independent publisher starts at zero on both counts, and a brand-new release resets part of it again.
Why our builds are unsigned
We will be straight about this: our Windows applications are not code-signed. A certificate that meaningfully improves SmartScreen reputation is an ongoing annual cost, and for software we give away for free with no advertising and no bundled installers, we decided that money is better not spent. That is a deliberate choice, not an oversight.
The trade-off is that you see a warning, and you have to take our word for it — or, better, not take our word for it and check instead. The rest of this page is how you check.
Verify the file yourself in about ten seconds
Every file we publish has a SHA-256 hash — a fingerprint that changes completely if even one byte of the file changes. Compare the hash of your downloaded file against the list below. If they match, you have exactly the file we built. If they do not match, delete it and download again from the official link.
Open PowerShell, and run:
Get-FileHash -Algorithm SHA256 "$env:USERPROFILE\Downloads\PDFGeekSetup.exe"Change the filename to whichever file you downloaded. Compare the Hash value it prints with the matching row below. Case does not matter.
Current release hashes
| File | Version | SHA-256 |
|---|---|---|
| PDFGeekSetup.exe | 1.0.1 | 8b5e44dddd390686fea1c111804aa629702e7a09a65cde83af465d36098b435d |
| PDFGeek.exe (portable) | 1.0.1 | 869826e2d45d7f2281746ae1c12ae523fe714825cce1b39d740b6b3a642b14f7 |
| AppGeekSetup.exe | 1.0.1 | 4f4138e58cc92a355871267e76ab94806bddc8b037b5dcb04f44e79b78d9f5c3 |
| AppGeek.exe (portable) | 1.0.1 | aa3c1fa2382fccf1585ae01bf9b31364aa1ad01c59fd99af43415185f60bd83b |
| AppGeek-light.exe | 1.0.1 | 0ba1d4eacb872e0a727224cdb4e6bb03bb86141bd103164c3d0c9dbb3561e03e |
| DiskGeekSetup.exe | 1.0.0 | 1f29df37544b9f5ea829ec87ee4fdc77b2209d3b82cf8e1a986021fc735f70b4 |
| Ultimate-Settings-Panel.zip | 8.0.0 | 470d6caf7c1d7926cfe041f86cd66b255a35b8956084608d8defa89929626e7b |
You can also cross-check any of these against the SHA256SUMS.txt file attached to the matching GitHub release, and against the file’s digest shown by GitHub itself.
Second opinion: scan it
Upload the file to VirusTotal and it will be checked by around seventy antivirus engines at once. Do not be alarmed by one or two engines flagging an unsigned installer — heuristic engines routinely flag any unsigned self-extracting binary. What you are looking for is the overall pattern, and the ability to compare the hash VirusTotal reports with the table above.
What we do instead of buying a certificate
- The source is public. Every application on this site has its full source on our GitHub organisation. You can read what it does before you run it.
- The builds are produced by public CI. Releases are compiled by GitHub Actions from the tagged commit, not uploaded by hand from someone’s laptop, and the workflow file is in the repository alongside the code.
- We publish hashes with every release, in a
SHA256SUMS.txtfile attached to the release itself. - We report false positives. Each new release is submitted to Microsoft’s security intelligence portal so that incorrect detections get corrected at source.
- No bundling, no adware, no telemetry-by-default. Our installers install one application and nothing else.
What we will never ask you to do
We will never tell you to turn off SmartScreen, disable Windows Defender, or add an exclusion for our folder. Any site that tells you to disable your security software in order to install its free utility is telling you something about itself. Leave your protections on. Verify the hash instead — it is a stronger check than the warning you are bypassing, and it costs you ten seconds.
If you are ever unsure about a file that claims to come from us, the safest thing to do is delete it and download again from the product page on this site or from our GitHub releases. If something still looks wrong, get in touch and we will look at it.