File Sharing Permissions in XP SP1

[Alex Nichol]

We are trying to istall our application on a customer's
system - they have Windows XP SP1, but our software's
licencing routine will not work as it doe not have full
access rights to the application's data folder.

When clicking the properties of the folder it appears to
be semi-read-only i.e. shaded read-only tick. Trying to
untick this is always ignored.

I believe this may be related to KB Article 863023.

That article is 'not currently available'. But your program should not
be looking for a read-only status on a folder. This has no meaning -
the directory can always be updated, and XP uses the read-only bit on a
folder's entry for a different purpose. You can click the entry in the
folder properties, and after clearing the box take Apply; or you can use
a Command prompt and
ATTRIB -R folder
but this will have a purely temporary effect, and windows will revert to
its own usage

 

[Alexander Grigoriev]

Have you ever tried to read application development guidelines? They say:
you're not supposed to modify/create files in your application's folder.
Treat it as read-only. Members of "Users" group don't have "write"
permission to it.

The correct place to keep modifiable data is under
%USERPROFILE%\LocalSettings\Application Data\<your app name>, and modifiable
settings in HKCU\SOFTWARE\<your company>\<app name>

 

[Alex Nichol]

Have you ever tried to read application development guidelines? They say:
you're not supposed to modify/create files in your application's folder.
Treat it as read-only. Members of "Users" group don't have "write"
permission to it.

May I reinforce that? A friend has a machine partitioned in one for
system/programs, one for data, to which his My Documents is directed. I
discovered one application had put its entire working data store in with
itself under Program Files - to the tune of *over a gigabyte*. And had
no means of putting it elsewhere, other than by reinstalling it from
scratch into the other partition. I was *not* pleased. It makes backup
in any sensible way almost impossible

 

[Alexander Grigoriev]

Well, MS (now) SourceSafe does that way by default. Windows DDK also
requires "write" privileges in its 'bin' folder. MS eVC (Embedded VC) could
not run a compiler, unless I logged in as admin. Not a well thought design.