Installing
“Windows protected your PC” when installing a Cubio app
Run any Cubio installer — Vario Free, Vario Pro, GlideRange, GlideSpace or GlideWatch — and Windows will probably stop you with a blue box before it starts:
Windows protected your PC
Microsoft Defender SmartScreen prevented an unrecognised app from starting. Running this app might put your PC at risk.
More info
That is expected, it happens with every one of our installers, and this page explains exactly why — and how to satisfy yourself the file is genuine before you click past it.
What the warning actually says
Read the wording closely: unrecognised. Not infected, not malicious, not “we found something.” SmartScreen is a reputation check, not a virus scan. It asks two questions — is this program signed by a publisher Microsoft knows, and has this exact file been downloaded and run enough times to have built a track record? For our installers, both answers are currently no.
So the warning is telling you the truth. Windows genuinely does not recognise the file. What it cannot tell you is whether the file is safe, and it does not claim to.
Why the Cubio installers are unrecognised
Two reasons, and neither is unusual for a small software company.
The installers are not code-signed yet. Signing means buying an Authenticode code-signing certificate from a certificate authority, which is an annual cost and a verification process for the company. We have not done it yet. A signed installer would show “Cubio AS” as a verified publisher instead of “Unknown publisher.”
Reputation is per file, and our files are new. Even after signing, SmartScreen builds trust from how widely a specific binary has been downloaded and run. We are a small operation selling to glider pilots, so every new release starts from close to zero downloads. A niche product never gets many.
This is the trade-off of installing directly rather than through an app store, and it is the reason most of our apps are now on the Connect IQ Store as well: bought there, an app installs from your phone and never touches a PC, so this warning cannot appear at all. The direct installer stays for the apps that are not on the store, and for anyone who prefers to buy from us — and for those, this warning is part of the price.
Check the file before you trust it
You do not have to take our word for it, and you should not have to. Every installer we publish has a SHA-256 checksum published beside it. A checksum is a fingerprint of the exact bytes: if the file you downloaded produces the same fingerprint we published, it is byte-for-byte the file we built, and nothing altered it in between.
In the download folder for each app you will see two files, for example:
Cubio-GlideRange-Setup.exe— the installerCubio-GlideRange-Setup.exe.sha256— its checksum
To check it, open PowerShell in the folder where you saved the installer and run:
Get-FileHash .\Cubio-GlideRange-Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256Compare the Hash it prints against the contents of the
.sha256 file (open it in Notepad, or click it in the download
folder). Upper and lower case do not matter. If the two strings match, the file
is ours and it is intact.
If they do not match, stop. Do not run it. Delete the file, download it again in case the first attempt was truncated, and if it still does not match, email support@cubio.no before going any further.
Getting past the warning
Once the checksum matches, the warning is a formality:
- Click More info in the blue box.
- Check the line that appears reads Publisher: Unknown publisher and the app name matches the file you downloaded.
- Click Run anyway.
If you do not see a Run anyway button, the dialog is usually being shown by a stricter policy than default SmartScreen — common on work-managed computers. Try the installer on a personal machine, or ask whoever administers the PC.
A word on advice like this in general: being told to click through a security warning should always make you suspicious, and it is exactly what a malicious download would also tell you. That is why the checksum step is above this one rather than below it. Verify first, then proceed — and apply the same standard to software from anyone else.
What the installer actually does
It is a small desktop app with one job. It waits for your Garmin watch to
appear over USB, then copies the app's .PRG file into the watch's
GARMIN\APPS folder. That is the whole operation. It does not
install a background service, it does not add a startup item, and it does not
need administrator rights for the copy itself.
Paid apps are activated later, on the watch, using the code from your purchase email — not by the installer.
Will this be fixed?
A code-signing certificate is on our list. When the installers are signed, the blue box will either stop appearing or will name Cubio AS as the publisher instead of saying unknown. Until then the warning is going to keep showing up, the checksums will keep being published beside every download, and this page will stay here.