One of the major things about Vista is User Access Control (UAC). With UAC you must have administrator privileges to have write access to just about anything, including the root of your C drive, and particularly your Program Files folder where data must be written for a great many programs. This has actually been true since the introduction of Windows 2000. However, prior to the introduction of Vista the majority of computers were operated with full administrator privileges. Vista has changed this, now even administrators operate with basic user privileges unless there is a need to elevate the privilege level for some reason. This means data can no longer be written to folders in the Program Files folder unless special privileges are set on the folder involved.

For the Version 7.2 release of ShowPro we implemented support for Windows Vista and made the changes required to the software for it to store it's data to the proper location prescribed by Vista which is...

C:\Users\[Profile name]\AppData\Roaming\Argus Development\ShowPro

Although we can store the data to this location we have decided not to for several reasons. One is that we feel some of our users will have trouble finding their data in this location particularly since Microsoft in their infinite wisdom chose to make the AppData folder hidden by default!

We have decided, at least for the time being to continue to store the data for our products in the application folders that reside in the Program Files folder. We will set the privileges on the folders we use appropriately to allow our software to function as it has in the past under Windows XP and 2000.

The one and only caveat is that when our product are first installed Vista will try and hint that they might have been installed incorrectly and will try to fool you into revoking the privileges that will allow your software to function correctly. If you revoke the privileges Vista will divert your storage to...

C:\Users\[Profile name]\AppData\Local\Virtual Store\Program Files\Argus Development\ShowPro

Again your data will be under the hidden AppData folder, good luck trying to network! So when installing our products on Vista if a message is presented at the end suggesting that the install may have not completed properly do not accept the offer to reinstall with the default settings, the install did in fact complete as intended and your software will work properly, the same as under Windows XP or 2000.