>Yup - Windows XP doesn't have User Account Control so any user can write anywhere.
>
>On Windows Vista forward, UAC doesn't make you a real Administrator when UAC is on, so you only have rights in folders where your specific account has full or write rights (which it typically won't in anything under Program Files or directly off the C: drive. Only 'user' paths - below your user's account folder (\users\rstrahl) typically will be accessible.
>
>For desktop apps under Vista and later it's critical to not store application data in the program folder. I've learned that the hard way too (back with Vista) in Help Builder, where some configuration files that were updated didn't work.

And I bet things also got really weird with folder virtualization... Once saw the result where file operations were being performed w/ the folder virtualization being toggled back and forth, coupled by attempt to "brute-force" attribute changes and registry patches in an attempt to circumvent UAC. In the end Windows was a total mess and thoroughly confused -- files and folders would seemingly pop in and out of existence in different places in a nearly random fashion.

>
>+++ Rick ---
>
>>>>Wow! Have not heard of that. Every app we've tested in Win8 runs the same
>>>>as Win7, except for one. It needed special rights to create files and directories
>>>>off the root directory (in our backup utility).
>>>That behavior also should not have changed, except your User Account Control
>>>Settings might be different on Win8...
>>
>>
>>That was the cause. If a user had admin rights, they could write to the root directory. This differed from some of our clients who moved from WinXP to Win8 in one go (mostly due to old computer system failures). If the IT department re-deployed the same user schema as before ... that's where the issues arose.