>>>>my app and it's data are all on the E: drive away from any windows owned folders
>>>
>>>The only folders that are not affected by UAC is anything under your user folder on Windows. Anything anywhere else is restricted by UAC permissions... C: drive, E: drive and network drives it doesn't matter. You'll need explicit permissions in those folders and even then Windows will redirect the file output to a temporary location in your users folder, not actually writing the data into the actual folder via file/folder virtualization.
>>>
>>>If you haven't disabled UAC or you're not running as THE Administrator account you shouldn't store data in any local folders as you'll have a huge performance hit or worse occasional failures to write data as its being virtualized. All application data should be stored somewhere in the user or AppData folders.
>>
>>Does this mean that file sharing, record locks etc are now officially dead? That under Windows we now have only the choice between user's private data, shared documents and a SQL(like) app on the server?
>
>No, but it does mean out of box you have to set permissions to make that work reliably. The problem with desktop apps is that they shouldn't muck with your computer permissions so a program can install into a Program Files folder and have data there, but it would have to change permissions there to allow the local user to write there directly (w/o FolderVirtualization)...

I'm referring to "Anything anywhere else is restricted by UAC permissions... C: drive, E: drive and network drives it doesn't matter. " and the rest of the paragraph. Suppose you have a file sharing app, be it in dbfs, or something in Access or perhaps Paradox or any other such app out there - is there any guarantee that the shared tables will be accessible, that the record locks will work, that no virtualization would create phantom copies without users' knowledge? ...Unless these permissions are part of the setup, or the app somehow refuses to work if they aren't set?

Not that I need this for myself - all my stuff is either single user (me) or on SQL - but local guys have questions for me from time to time, and I need to appear as if I know what I'm talking about :). I take it the file sharing paradigm is mostly discouraged, if not deprecated, in Redmond (is SMB3 already out, without ever fixing the SMB2 bug?) and I'm not recommending it to anyone anymore. But from time to time I may need to help the guys who still have to use it.