Allow access permission to write in Program Files of Windows 7

Question

My application throws  Access denied  errors when writing temporary files in the installation directory where the executable resides  However it works perfectly well in Windows XP  How to provide access rights to Program Files directory in Windows 7   EDIT  How to make the program ask the user to elevate rights   ie run program with full admin rights

User · Answer

You can add an access to IIS User for folders of Website or Web Application that you want write or rewrite in it

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I cannot agree with arguments  that it is better to write all files in other directories  e g    APPDATA   it is only that you cannot avoid it  if you want to avoid running application as administrator on Windows 7   It would be much cleaner to keep all application specific data  e g  ini files  in the same folder as the application  or in sub folders  as to speed the data all over the disk   APPDATA   registry and who knows where else   This is just Microsoft idea of clean programming  Than of course you need registry cleaner  disk cleaner  temporary file cleaner      instead of e very clean practice - removing the application folder removes all application specific data  exep user data  which is normally somewhere in My Documents or so    In my programs I would prefer to have ini files in application directory  however  I do not have them there  only because I cannot have them there  on Windows

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Another way round it would be to stop UAC then restart it   Create a CMD file with the following code   Rem Stop UAC  windir  System32 reg exe ADD HKLM SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Policies System  v EnableLUA  t REG DWORD  d 0  f rem force reboot Start ShutDown  R  F  T 30  You ll need to right click on the CMD file and use run as admin  once you have finished what you are doing restart UAC with the following code  no need to use run as admin this time     windir  System32 reg exe ADD HKLM SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Policies System  v EnableLUA  t REG DWORD  d 1  f  rem force reboot Start ShutDown  R  F  T 30  The down sides to using this method is have to right click and use run as admin to close UAC down and you have to reboot for it to take effect   BTW there are several reasons why you would need to write to the forbidden areas   the first two that springs to mind would be to run a batch file to append host to prevent your browser going to dodgy sites or to copy license keys in a silent install

User · Answer

If you have such a program just install it in C    not in Program Files  I had a lot of problems when I was installing Android SDK  My problem got solved  by installing it in C

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I was looking for answers  I found only one   None of these work for me  I am not trying to write temporary files  unless this is defined as nonsystem files  Although I am designated the admin on my user profile  with full admin rights indicated in the UAC  I cannot write to program files or windows  This is very irritating   I try to save an image found online directly to the windows web wallpaper folder and it won t let me  Instead  I must save it to my desktop  I REFUSE to navigate to  my documents pictures etc  as I refuse to USE such folders  I have my own directory tree thank you  then  from the desktop  cut and paste it to the windows web wallpaper folder  And you are telling me I should do that and smile  As an admin user  I SHOULD be able to save directly to its destination folder  My permissions in drive properties security and in directory properties security say I can write  but I can t  Not to program files  program files  86  and windows   How about saving a file I just modified for a game in Program Files  86   name of game  folder  It won t let me  I open the file to modify it  I can t save it without first either saving it to desktop etc as above  or opening the program which is used for modifying the file first as admin  which means first navigating all the way over to another part of the directory tree where I store those user mod programs  then within the program selecting to open file and navigate again to the file I could have just clicked on to modify in the first place from my projects folder  only to discover that this won t work either  It saves the file  but the file cannot be located  It is there  but invisible  The only solution is to save to desktop as above   I shouldn t have to do all this as an admin user  However  if I use the true admin account all works fine  But I don t want to use the real admin account  I want to use a user account with admin rights  It says I have admin rights  but I don t   And  finally  I refuse to store my portables in  appdata   This is not how I wish to navigate through my directory tree  My personal installations which I use as portables are stored in the directory I create as a navigation preference   So  here is the tried and true answer I have found   From what I have seen so far     unless one uses the real admin account  these permissions just aren t ever really available to any other user with admin privileges in the Windows Vista and Windows 7 OS s  While it was simple to set admin privileges in Windows XP  later versions have taken this away for all but those who can comfortably hack around

User · Answer

It would be neater to create a folder named  c  programs writable   and put you app below that one  That way a jungle of low c-folders can be avoided   The underlying trade-off is security versus ease-of-use  If you know what you are doing you want to be god on you own pc  If you must maintain healthy systems for your local anarchistic society  you may want to add some security

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Your program has to run with Administrative Rights   You can t do this automatically with code  but you can request the user  in code  to elevate the rights of your program while it s running  There s a wiki on how to do this  Alternatively  any program can be run as administrator by right-clicking its icon and clicking  Run as administrator    However  I wouldn t suggest doing this   It would be better to use something like this    Environment GetFolderPath SpecialFolder ApplicationData     to get the AppData Folder path and create a folder there for your app   Then put the temp files there

User · Answer

You can t cause a  Net application to elevate its own rights   It s simply not allowed   The best you can do is to specify elevated rights when you spawn another process   In this case you would have a two-stage application launch   Stage 1 does nothing but prepare an elevated spawn using the System Diagnostics ProcessStartInfo object and the Start   call   Stage 2 is the application running in an elevated state   As mentioned above  though  you very rarely want to do this   And you certainly don t want to do it just so you can write temporary files into  programfiles    Use this method only when you need to perform administrative actions like service start stop  etc   Write your temporary files into a better place  as indicated in other answers here

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I think there is an alternate solution to all these problems      Make an two level application  As said above     1  Launcher which will launch another Main App using code such as  VB   Call ShellExecute hwnd   runas   App Path  amp    MainApp exe   0  0  vbNormalFocus    2  Main App  which is writing to protected areas  ie Program Files folder  I ve successfully tried this with windows 7  I m also developing an app which has online update feature  But it doesn t work in Vista W7    I agree with other peoples about Microsoft Policies and Standard Practices   But my Question is    1  How to apply update to an existing application  which probably always remain in Program Files folder  2  There might be some way to do this  otherwise how goolge updater  antivirus updater or any software updater workes      I need answer to my questions       o   Prof  Rajendra Khope  MIT  Pune  India

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I am working on a program that saves its data properly to  APPDATA   but sometimes  there are system-wide settings that affect all users  So in these situations  it HAS to write to the programs installation directory   And as far as I have read now  it s impossible to temporarily get write access to one directory  You can only run the whole application as administrator  which should be out of the question  or not be able to save that file   all or nothing   I guess  I will just write the file to  APPDATA  and launch an external program that copies the file into the installation folder and have THAT program demand admin privileges    dumb idea  but seems to be the only practical solution

User · Answer

While M   best practices  is to not write data into the  programfiles  folder  I sometimes do   I do not think it wise to write temporary files into such a folder  as the TEMP environment variable might e g  point to a nice  fast  RAM drive   I do not like to write data into  APPDATA  however   If windows gets so badly messed up that one needs to e g  wipe it and reinstall totally  perhaps to a different drive  you might lose all your settings for nearly all your programs   I know   I ve done it many times   If it is stored in  programfiles   1  it doesn t get lost if I e g  have to re-install Windows on another drive  since a user can simply run the program from its directory  2  it makes it portable  and 3  keeps programs and their data files together   I got write access by having my installer  Inno Setup  create an empty file for my INI file  and gave it the users-modify setting in the  Files  section   I can now write it at will

User · Answer

Options I can think of   Run entire app as full admin priv  using UAC Run a sub-process as full admin for only those things needing access Write temporary files elsewhere

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Your program should not write temporary files  or anything else for that matter  to the program directory  Any program should use  TEMP  for temporary files and  APPDATA  for user specific application data  This has been true since Windows 2000 XP so you should change your aplication   The problem is not Windows 7   You can ask for appdata folder path   string dir   Environment GetFolderPath Environment SpecialFolder ApplicationData     or for TEMP path  string dir   Path GetTempPath

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Add new item in the project  Application Manifest and save it   Now open this file and look for  lt requestExecutionLevel gt   It must be set to asInvoker    Change it to highestAvailable  Now on executing your application  a prompt will appear asking for permission  Click yes   Thats all    now you can write and read from the system32 or any other file which requires admin right  You can verify your application by sigcheck   sigcheck exe -m yourapp exe   And in the output check for element requestedExecutionLevel

[c#] Allow access permission to write in Program Files of Windows 7

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