I've been reading some of the problems people are having with AC/decal and I have a question.


I keep seeing the same recommendation from people about installing AC/decal into different folders than the default. What is the purpose of this?


I purchased a new computer with Vista about 5 months ago and up until then had been running XP. The very first thing I did with the new computer was disable the UAC in Vista. Once I did this, I have seen absolutely no difference between XP and Vista.


Aside from the portal.dat file getting corrupted, I have seen no adverse affects from installing every program I have running on my new machine to the default directories.


Wouldn't it be simpler to tell people to turn the UAC off than to have them uninstall programs/move folders?


This is just a question and I am by no means an expert.

 

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The problem is a lot of older programs use the same folder as the program is stored in to store data, typically 'C:\Program Files\(Plugin)\'. In Vista, this is a read-only folder- programs are supposed to use the users 'Application Data' folder, which is in an unprotected area.

So, some older programs will fail, because they try to write to a file that's in a read-only folder. Decal itself suffers from this, when it tries to download and store the new memlocs each month.

Yeah, after posting this I read the sticky at the top of the page. Wasn't aware of the read-only thing with Vista. Which makes it all the more wierd that I installed Decal in the default directory and have had no problems with the monthly updates.


Wonder if having the UAC turned off affects the read-only thing? If so, that could be the simple answer/fix to the majority of problems people have.


Edit: Found out why it still works. Even though the program files directory is write-protected, when an operation attempts to write to the file, it is instead written(wrote?) to a virtual file that is mapped back to the program files folder that it was intended to write to. This virtual file is hidden. No idea what impact this has on other programs, but seems to not cause any problems that I can see with Decal. But, like I said earlier, this may be because I have the UAC disabled.


Can any knowledgable people throw in their 2 cents? Just seeing if maybe there is a simpler way to help people out when they have a problem.

 

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