Question

My application now needs to create and then write files to a temp directory that resides within its installed directory. The msi puts it in Program Files\ by default. I didn’t consider what would happen though if some poor soul runs it using a non administrative account.

Description: Access to the path 'Temp' is denied.
StackTrace:    at System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath) 
at System.IO.Directory.InternalCreateDirectory(String fullPath, String path, Object dirSecurityObj) 
at System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(String path) 

I looked on my computer and by default any account in the users group doesn’t have write permissions for just about every folder. I guess I’m ignorant of it all because I always run all my stuff as an administrator without even thinking about it.

Anyways, is there a way to:

1: Code the directory creating/file writing so that it temporarily elevates the permissions of the program to administrator if it’s not running as an administrator (I’m using C#)

2: Configure the installer to set the directory permissions to ‘full control’ for everybody in the ‘Users’ group (using windows setup project msis)

Thanks!

Answer 1

Don’t do that.

You should write to per-user directories in the AppData folder. (or Path.GetTempPath(), which is in that)

Anything else will create security vulnerabilities.