VB6 Application Creating Files under "Program Files" in Vista or later OS

Question

I have a legacy VB6 system which is installed in C:/Program Files/IronDuke

In the past it has written some files into this directory. I understand that these files are hidden away if the application is installed under Vista or a later OS, but not if they were written under XP or earlier OS.

How can I retrieve a copy of these 'hidden' files when written under Vista or Windows 7 or 8?

Answer 1

You are looking at a feature called UAC Virtualization, this blog posting gives a pretty good rundown on what is happening and where the files are located.

From above article:

For example, if an application attempts to write to C:\Program Files\Contoso\Settings.ini, and the user does not have permissions to write to that directory (the Program Files), the write operation will be redirected to C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Contoso\settings.ini. If an application attempts to write to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Contoso\ in the registry, it will automatically be redirected to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\VirtualStore\MACHINE\Software\Contoso or HKEY_USERS\UserSID_Classes\VirtualStore\Machine\Software\Contoso.

so in your case if you are trying to find the files you need to look in:

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\IronDuke\

Answer 2

You cannot write to Program Files under Windows 7 / 8 - system security prevents programs running as regular users from doing so. One option for you is to write these files to the user's profile folder (you'll have to update the VB6 program for this, although the changes should be pretty small if the program is otherwise well-written). This would be your best option since the updated code would work well in the future without more changes.

You amy be able to get the program running using Compatibility Mode but I doubt it - on my Windows 8 system I don't even get 'Windows XP' as a compatibility option anymore. All other options will likely enforce security.

You can try running your program as administrator but I'd only do this if you don't have the source to make the changes - it's poor practice to run programs with all privileges since it opens up the system for attacks.