CODEWITHSUNDEEP
delphiinirights
serhiyiv
serhiyiv

Reputation: 183

Application Settings + IniFile + User Rights

Could you tell me please. I wrote an application that uses 'Settings.ini' to save settings. The application is installed using InnoSetup. If there are several user accounts and the application is installed in one of them, so, if I try to run the application from another account I get error "Unable to write to....". That is, if run from another account, the application has no rights to write to the settings file. I don't know what happens in Windows XP, but that's the way application behaves in Windows 7. So could you tell me please, is there something I should define in my application to make it work for multiple users or it should be changed during the installation, somewhere in InnoSetup parameters? Thank you.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 704

Answers (1)

Arioch 'The
Arioch 'The

Reputation: 16065

You should - install the very program into Program Files or some other common folder - folder that any user have rights to read and run, but not to write or delete. USually installers would allow to override the folder, but the rule remains: every user should have non-destructive rights (read and execute) and none - destructive (delete, overwrite)

That means your installer should request Admin rights and UAC Elevation - ask InnoSetup forum or documentation how to do it. That may deal with including manifests resources into installer. It is normal when a regular user runs the installer and installer then asks for another username and password with admin rights.

The settings and other user-unique data should be saved into special per-user data folders. Usually that is AppLocal folder under user profile. However it is task for your application rather than the installer. Installer may create global settings templates, that the application would just copy into user-local settings on the 1st run under given user, or would override by user-local settings if cascading settings storage is implemented.

Run command prompt, issue set command - and u would see all needed paths as environment variables wit hnames like AppPath, LocalAppPath and UserProfile

Upvotes: 1

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