The Digital Signatures tab may not appear in the properties dialog box of a digitally signed file that is larger than approximately 400 MB in Windows XP with Service Pack 2

In Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2), the Digital Signatures tab may not appear in the properties dialog box of a digitally signed file that is larger than approximately 400 MB.

When you install a digitally signed .exe file that is larger than approximately 300 MB, you may receive a security warning message that reports that the publisher is unknown.

This problem may occur when the Crypt32.dll file call to the CryptoAPI is unsuccessful. The Crypt32.dll file makes this call to verify the signed file. This call is unsuccessful when the digitally signed file is too large for the MapViewOfFile function to map.

Note The file size at which this problem occurs varies depending on the value that the MapViewOfFile function returns.

To work around this problem, use one of the following methods:

• Use the Certificate Verification Tool (Chktrust.exe) to verify the status of a signed file.
  
  This command-line tool is included in version 1.1 of the .Net Framework. For more information about this tool, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/z045761b.aspx (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/z045761b.aspx)
• Use catalog signing instead of binary signing to sign the file.
  
  For more information about catalog signing, visit the following Microsoft Web sites:
  
  Using Catalog Files
  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Aa741204.aspx (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Aa741204.aspx)
  MakeCat
  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa386967.aspx (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa386967.aspx)

Note Software restriction policies that use a certificate rule require binary signing and do not work with catalog signing. If you encounter the problem that is described in this article, you can instead use a path or hash rule to implement a software restriction policy on the file.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.