I'm about to deploy an installation package of my software online as EXE installer file that users will be able to download from the website of my company, and then run and install. The installer and the applicatoin itself is C# .NET. The application is intented to be used on MS Windows 10.
I'm experiencing a problem with the "Windows protected your PC" in my tests. This screen is shown on user's Windows 10 when they download my setup.exe from the company website. The screen tells that the Publisher is unknown. So the user would need to "Unblock" the file first to run it without this blue screen.
How should I gently solve it so that we are sure the screen does not appear on Windows 10 of our users?
Should we buy EV code signing certificate from a Trusted Vendor (we are considering SECTIGO (COMODO)) and sign the setup.exe with it? Will it make the screen not appear then ?
Is there anything else we should do?
I have read that it might take some days and a couple of downloads to get rid of the SmartScreen. What are your experiences in terms of how long (and how many downloads of the software) it actually might take? Does anyone have any experience with SECTIGO EV code signing in terms of this?
Many help for any suggestions.