Virus warning for Windows-Standalone Versions - (off-topic)

[ThomasI]

This is a bit of an off-topic. But maybe somebody can help my with it:
All of my ATARI ST games are available as “Windows Standlone Versions” from https://anarcholab.itch.io/

The way it works is fairly simple: I use Windows powerscript to call HATARI emulator+emuTOS fully configured.

And for a comfortable experience for the player I made that powerscript into an “.exe” file with a nice icon. (download it so see the structure – it is free)

• First I used a tool called PS2EXE – the result was flagged as a virus by Windows Defender.

• So I changed to ISESteroids to do exactly the same thing. And now – some weeks later – also these exe are flagged as a virus.

The powerscript is just a single line:

Code: Select all

 .\Emulator\HATARI\hatari.exe --joy1 real --configfile ".\Emulator\Game\hatari.cfg" --tos ".\Emulator\Game\etos512k.img"  --harddrive ".\Emulator\Game\ROOT" --confirm-quit FALSE --auto "C:\LOADER.PRG" 

Does anybody have a suggestion for a simple tool to create an .exe that can execute that call and is NOT flagged as a virus?

Additional note:
Of course I could use a .bat file to do the same thing. But the .bat file can not have the nice icon. There is also a tool called BAT2EXE – the resulting exe is flagged as a virus as well.

[mlynn1974]

PS2EXE was flagged as a false positive but it was fixed over a year ago in MalwareBytes Anti-Malware.
https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/2 ... %20malware.
Some AVs with old definition files might flag it as a false positive.

A shortcut to a .BAT (.LNK) can have a custom icon but you might need to bundle a .EXE which does nothing but includes the custom icon which the shortcut then refers to.

[ThomasI]

PS2EXE was flagged as a false positive but it was fixed over a year ago in MalwareBytes Anti-Malware.
Some AVs with old definition files might flag it as a false positive.

That is a very interesting info. In my case the PS2EXE .exe was flagged in Feb 2022 by up to date Windows Defender. (That was the reason I switched to ISESteroids in the first place) So I think the problem still exists.

I have to give the ".LNK" suggestion a try... but again I will need an exe... hmmm...

[1st1]

Somethingh what downloads a file from Internet to execute it is always a bad malware like behaviour.

[mlynn1974]

A .LNK file can get its icon straight from a .ICO file. There is no need to have the icon also bound to an executable unless you don't want people to steal the icon easily.

There is a "This file was downloaded from the internet" attribute on files, but if it's inside a zip and the file is unzipped it shouldn't be a problem. That may prevent the file being uncompressed unless the attribute is unchecked on things like corporate PCs or other "locked down" Windows installations.