saving file in "Program Files/myApplication" folder with fopen_s

Question

My application saves its settings under its executable folder, which happens to be where it is installed under Windows(C:\ProgramFiles). The problem I'm having is that I use fopen_s and open the file as binary but when my application saves the settings Windows doesn't allow it. I'm thinking it has to do something with permissions but I'm not sure where to look. Maybe I should change the directory to where it saves the settings to something like users/Documents.

Any thoughts on this, and why it isn't working? Why is fopen_s not allowed to save a file where my application is installed?

Yeahp.... it works if run as administrator, that is how I came up with the theory of an issue with user permissions. — Miguel, Jan 02 '14 at 06:25
It's a security concern, Use different path where you have write permissions to store your file. — Chinna, Jan 02 '14 at 06:30

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 02 '14 at 06:21

3

Applications running under normal user privileges have read-only access to the %ProgramFiles% directory. This is by design. If it was possible to save files to this directory, then multiple users sharing the same PC (with different accounts) would overwrite each other's settings file.

Adjust your code to save it's settings to the %LOCALAPPDATA% directory. Use SHGetKnownFolderPath API to get this directory path.

answered Jan 02 '14 at 06:21

selbie

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More importantly, allowing _anyone_ write access to %ProgramFiles% is a _major_ security flaw. – icabod Jan 02 '14 at 11:10

saving file in "Program Files/myApplication" folder with fopen_s

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