Downloaded from where?
Retry?

Sorry, let me start at the beginning. When I get to the end, I'll try to stop.

I downloaded the dosbox 0.72 Win32 installer from dosbox.com, double clicked the installer, told windows defender to allow it to run, and then got the error message.
I have retried the download three times from the same source, just in case of some random glitch, and still have the same problem.

Is there another source for this download? Or is there a work-around for this problem?

Sourceforge provides different mirrors, use another one.

Here is the MD5 checksum for the 0.72 installer:

14e5d3cf6b015066e6c9b04df8556e7c *DOSBox0.72-win32-installer.exe

Does yours match?

I used FastSum and received this MD5 checksum: e3d270d29cf75c0d1ebd89c5987970b8
which does not match.

downloading from an alternate mirror really helped.

thanks for the advice, now I don't feel like a failed noob.

I'm a noob with allies! 😁

If you re-download and it works, please check the original download location
again and report which server it was so somebody else can test it.

While I'm not exactly sure how to identify the server, this is the URL that opens in a new window when I click on the original download link that I had trouble with:

http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.ph … mirror=internap

Hope this helps.