>>As an example, Quickbooks saves it's data files in the "Program Files\Intuit\Quickbooks" folder. Of course, you can change this but that's there default and I'm sure there are lots of Quickbooks users that have their data files sitting right there.
>
>What's this problem exactly?
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>Just about any existing application does this and this will work just fine in the default Vista installation which allows the local users access there.
>
>(checking...)
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>Hmmmm... this is a bit odd. I just checked my Program Files folder permissions and there's no Authenticated Users group. This group exists and has most but not all locations on the drive marked with full access. All my private off root folders have it.
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>However, Program Files does not, which seems really odd.
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>In a default Vista install the user will show up as a 'pseudo' Administrator and will have full rights to the program files folder (which is I suppose why this works for me here).
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>I suspect this will still change. I just can't see that MS would lock down Program Files in this way which would be a complete upgrade disaster. 90% of applications out there require some sort of write access in the installation folder if for nothing else than writing minimal configuration data.
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>
>+++ Rick ---


We've concluded that we are going to make our next release (due out in January, 2007) work for Win 2000, XP, and Vista all the same way. Almost...

Here's a summary of our approach.

We test for the USERPROFILE environmental variable. If it doesn't exist, then we are using a Windows version prior to 2000 and we will store our system and configuration files in the application folder in Program Files. We will create a temp folder within it for temporary files.

For win 2000 and XP... (You can tell this because USERPROFILE environtmental variable contains "Documents and Settings" in it.)

System and Configuration files saved in:
C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\appprefix

Temp files saved in:
C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\appprefix\temp

For Vista...

System and Configuration files saved in:
C:\Users\user\AppData\appprefix

Temp files saved in:
C:\Documents and Settings\user\AppData\appprefix\temp

We decided that we needed to change the location for system and configuration files in Win 2000 and XP so that we could debug this prior to switching to Vista. Right now we've only got one computer running Vista.

It sounds like you're doing your development on Vista?

Any comments about our approach?

I've still got a question about where application DATA should be stored. It sounds like they don't want you to put your data on the same drive where Windows Vista is installed, yet this is what we typically do. We have a separate data folder off the root drive for data files. Will this cause a problem for standard users?

Best, John