Burn Windows Iso To Usb Linux

Let's follow through that train of thought. If applications need per-user configuration but can't store it in the Registry, where can they store it? The choices are pretty much some kind of configuration under the user's profile (either Application Data or Local SettingsApplication Data depending on size and roaming requirements), or under the application's directory.

If you place the configuration data in the application's directory, it becomes difficult to back up - one of the main reasons for the Program Files/My Documents split way back in the Windows 9x days. It's also impossible to roam. It's pretty terrible for security too as you'd have to grant write permissions for the application directory to all potential users. This is already a major issue for auto-updating apps.

Placing the configuration files in the user's Application Data or Local SettingsApplication Data folder (CSIDL_APPDATA or CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA) has exactly the same problem when uninstalling - that only the current user's profile will be available. The default security descriptor in Windows XP for a user's profile is that only the user and the SYSTEM account can read or write these folders, so in fact the problem is worse than the registry.

In any case, any situation where you as a programmer allow third parties to alter your configuration allows them to make this kind of configuration issue. IE perhaps needed to be more robust in the face of this error. Perhaps Windows in general needs a way to allow the programmer to hook up a cleanup routine to run the next time a user with a profile on the system logs in - but at what point can the system be declared 'clean' and the cleanup routine finally removed?

10/2/2005 7:06:00 PM by Mike Dimmick