Deleting files on Vista

[Ken Ray]

On Fri, 29 Jun 2007 13:00:29 -0400, Shari wrote:

> Not there, nope.  I was under the impression that this folder is no 
> longer writeable.  The main app goes there, but none of the files 
> that require writeability.

Well, you can *install* there, but once installed you can't write back 
to the file(s) in the Program Files folder, so Vista copies the file to 
the VirtualStore and makes the change on *that* file instead.

> So using your example above as a template, I should be able to create 
> a series of VirtualStore paths to check?  So if the path to the real 
> prefs file was:
> 
> C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Application 
> Data/myCreatedPrefsFolder/myPrefsFiles
> 
> The virtual path (with no returns) would be:
> 
>  C:/Users/<USERNAME>/AppData/Local/VirtualStore/
> Documents and Settings/All Users/Application Data/<APPNAME>/
> myCreatedPrefsFolder/myPrefsFiles

Actually, I don't think that the All Users/Application Data folder is 
virtualized (but I could be wrong). I've only seen this with Program 
Files and registry entries so far.

> Would it also create the folder I created to put the prefs in?  Or 
> would it just create the prefs files?

It would mimic the path you used in a relative way. That is, suppose 
you installed a file in Program Files/MyApp/Support/MyFile.txt. When 
you went to write the file, it would be virtualized to 
...VirtualStore/Program Files/MyApp/Support/MyFile.txt.


Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software, Inc.
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/