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()

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.

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

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.

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).

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 & "\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)

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

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.