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Asked: 2026-05-10T23:13:19+00:00

I have an application written in Delphi 7 which does not require an admin

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I have an application written in Delphi 7 which does not require an admin privilages to run.

For some reason I am able to save files to c:\windows and c:\windows\system32 from within the application even though the application has not requested UAC elevation. I am logged in as an admin with UAC turned on and I haven’t changed any of the default UAC settings. The files actually show up under Windows Explorer as well. I am not using the ‘Run as Administrator’ option.

If I try to do the same thing using WordPad under the same profile I get an error as expected.

Any ideas what is going on?

Th application is using Ole Structured Storage to save and includes the following manifest, if that helps.

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' standalone='yes'?>     <assembly xmlns='urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1' manifestVersion='1.0'>     <assemblyIdentity type='win32' name='DelphiApplication' version='1.0.0.0' processorArchitecture='*'/> <dependency> <dependentAssembly>   <assemblyIdentity     type='win32'     name='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls'     version='6.0.0.0'     publicKeyToken='6595b64144ccf1df'     language='*'     processorArchitecture='*'/> </dependentAssembly> </dependency> <trustInfo xmlns='urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2'>             <security>                     <requestedPrivileges>                             <requestedExecutionLevel                                    level='asInvoker'                                    uiAccess='false'/>                     </requestedPrivileges>             </security>     </trustInfo> </assembly>

Edit: To be clear my application does not save anything to these locations by default. I am choosing these locations via the standard file save dialog.

Update

I have found out why my application was being treated as legacy despite including the above manifest. It turns out a 2nd manifest was also being included which did not have the ‘trustInfo’ section. I have removed this 2nd manifest and all is well now.

Thanks for all the help

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1 Answer

  1. This is a feature of UAC to make old applications compatible with Vista. It redirects any request to write to a system folder that the user lacks permission to a local folder.

    They are stored under ‘AppData\Local\VirtualStore’ folder under the current user’s profile. There is a group policy setting to disable this feature: ‘Virtualize file and registry write failures to per-user locations’

    This file and registry virtualization features are designed to allow legacy applications to run under Windows Vista standard user accounts. Legacy application is defined as a 32-bit executable without a specific Vista manifest. If you provider a Vista manifest to decorate your application as Vista-compatible, this virtualization setting won’t affect your application (as in your Wordpad example)

    Mark Russinovich has a great article on this: Inside Windows Vista User Account Control

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