I wonder about this because we are developing an application, after installation some files were copied to program files and some to user profile directory. But, we found some issues w.r.t program files. Now all files are installed in the current user's directory. Even Google Chrome, does so. What do you think?
+2
A:
If you install a given application on 10 different accounts, do you really want the application to exist 10 times on disk?
Cody Brocious
2009-01-17 08:44:28
Thats a valid point.Ours is vb6 based outlook plugin.
ravi
2009-01-17 08:48:39
A:
Since Vista the Program Files directory has been marked as off limits so applications can't write to it by default unless given admin privileges.
This is for better security to stop other applications manipulating existing installed applications.
There is a good write up of this here on how to work with UAC but also learning to write more secure applications.
Justin King
2009-01-17 08:48:19
This has nothing to do with applications being installed in a given location, though, outside of allowing non-admin users to install it or update (which is a clear security issue anyway, when dealing with shared code). There's no reason you can't install globally and store per-user data locally.
Cody Brocious
2009-01-17 08:50:17
+1
A:
The program files directory is for just that, the executable files, dlls, assemblies and other executable code and non editable configuration data associated with a program. The user profile directory is for data and code associated with the individual user.
1800 INFORMATION
2009-01-17 08:48:39