Fix for Windows Security Warning When Dragging Files on a Specific Drive Letter

Fix for Windows Security Warning When Dragging Files on a Specific Drive Letter

I was getting this warning constantly in Windows 11:

“Your internet security settings suggest that one or more files may be harmful. Do you want to use it anyway?”

The strange part was that it only happened when I used drag-and-drop in File Explorer. Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V worked without any warning.

My setup: Google Drive for desktop, with one account mounted as G:. I also had other Google Drive accounts mounted under other drive letters.

What I tested:

1. Same Google Drive account mounted as G: produced the warning.
2. Same Google Drive account mounted as J: did not produce the warning.
3. A normal local test folder mounted as G: using subst also produced the same warning.

That proved the issue was not Google Drive, not the files, and not Mark-of-the-Web on individual files. The problem followed the drive letter G:.

The fix/workaround:

After the G: drive is mounted, restart Windows Explorer.

Open Command Prompt and run:

taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe
start explorer.exe

The desktop and taskbar disappear briefly, then come back. After that, drag-and-drop on G: worked normally with no Windows Security warning.

You can also make a small batch file:

@echo off
taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe
start explorer.exe
exit

Important: run it after the drive letter is already mounted. If you run it before the drive exists, the warning may come back when the drive mounts later.

Credit where credit is due: I use ChatGPT to problem-solve weird Windows issues, and it helped me isolate this by testing whether the warning followed the files, Google Drive, or the drive letter. The key diagnostic step was mounting a normal local folder as G: with subst. Since the warning still occurred, the drive letter itself was the culprit.

did you try this:

Yes all three of those are already checked. But thank you for the idea. I also tried adjusting many, many other security settings.

As a follow up, my solution only temporarily fixes the problem. On reboot, the problem recurs. Ai's Explanation was that Explorer Is making a bad start up time security classification for G: Where we have the google drive mounted. We isolated it to G: If we mount the google drive on a different letter everything is fine. If we mount a system folder on G the problem manifests. It is clearly associated with whatever is mounted to G: And fixing it only lasts until the next reset.

As a semi permanent solution ChatGPT made me .bat file that I can double click To execute. This bat file kills explorer and then restarts it. Just takes a second. This consistently fixes the problem. Admittedly, I might not truly know its root cause, but this is the only solution I have found. I have attached the bat file as a text file here. For anyone who runs across this and wants to use it you have to change the extension from text to bat.

If the bright people on this forum come up with a more permanent solution, I certainly welcome it.

did you try unchecking this



and adding the drive's path/ip to the list?


and / or Enable this

Just curious and maybe a dumb idea, but have you tried creating another user account (or enabling hidden administrator account) to see if the problem exists to make sure there is no corruption in the user account.
I know user mount points (removable drives and network paths) are mapped per user under
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2