Allow Access Permission to Write in Program Files of Windows 7

Allow access permission to write in Program Files of Windows 7

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()

Windows 7 Create Folder in Program Files failing in C# code even thought I have admin rights!

Since UAC is enabled, programs do not run with administrative privileges, even though your account is an administrator.

In order to have administrative privileges, you need to right-click the application and click Run as Administrator.

However, your program should not write anything to Program Files after it's installed, except when installing updates.

Instead, you should store your log file in the user's Application Data folder.

How to allow a python script to make changes to program files?

I found the solution

When converting the .py file to an .exe file with PyInstaller, use the option

-uac=admin 

Thanks to @mogi

How to grant permission to users for a directory using command line in Windows?

As of Vista, cacls is deprecated. Here's the first couple of help lines:

C:\>cacls
NOTE: Cacls is now deprecated, please use Icacls.

Displays or modifies access control lists (ACLs) of files

You should use icacls instead. This is how you grant John full control over D:\test folder and all its subfolders:

C:\>icacls "D:\test" /grant John:(OI)(CI)F /T

According do MS documentation:

• F = Full Control
• CI = Container Inherit - This flag indicates that subordinate containers will inherit this ACE.
• OI = Object Inherit - This flag indicates that subordinate files will inherit the ACE.
• /T = Apply recursively to existing files and sub-folders. (OI and CI only apply to new files and sub-folders). Credit: comment by @AlexSpence.

For complete documentation, you may run "icacls" with no arguments or see the Microsoft documentation here and here

Cannot create files in C:\ProgramData\ even after granting Users group full permission

Could it be because the installer does not give adequate permissions to the Users group on the folder in C:\ProgramData\ ?

Actually, it is more likely that the installer did not have sufficient permissions to mess with "C:\ProgramData\" directly. (I thought that this scenario sounded familiar....)

When Microsoft introduced UAC they needed a way for older applications to continue working, at least for a while. What they came up with was "File and Registry virtualization", where legacy applications that tried to access (now-)verboten System folders or registry entries would be redirected to their own user-specific "virtualized" copy of those resources. As the Wikipedia article on UAC describes it:

Applications written with the assumption that the user will be running with administrator privileges experienced problems in earlier versions of Windows when run from limited user accounts, often because they attempted to write to machine-wide or system directories (such as Program Files) or registry keys (notably HKLM).[4] UAC attempts to alleviate this using File and Registry Virtualization, which redirects writes (and subsequent reads) to a per-user location within the user's profile. For example, if an application attempts to write to a directory such as "C:\Program Files\appname\settings.ini" to which the user does not have write permission, the write will be redirected to "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\appname\settings.ini". The redirection feature is only provided for non-elevated 32-bit applications, and only if they do not include a manifest that requests specific privileges.[13]

If your installer requests "Run as administrator" privileges then you should be able to avoid this issue.

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