Windows 7 - Virtual Store

Hi all - first time posting, thanks in advance for your assistance. I'm having difficulty where an IDE i'm using (Eclipse), which is located in c:/Program Files, is not saving files to this location, which I need updated real time since that is the location I have my local environment set to use for hosting local websites via Apache. Everytime I save a file, it goes to C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\<program> and doesn't appear to replicate back to c:/program files. Can someone give me more insight into this 'feature' and how I can combat it in order to have my files updated on c:/program files? Is this an application setting or at the OS level? Is this storage technique limited to Program Files only ?

Thank you for the education, I sincerely appreciate it.
Ryan

Hi - possibly not very clear in my issue. Instead, can someone explain to me how virtual store works and what the MS methodology is? To re-mediate my situation, I'm likely going to move my App Data off of c: or c:/Program Files to avoid some of the restrictions.

Thanks in advance for taking the time.

Know that this is by design. And you are still trying to work from an XP mentality.

Win 7 is NOT XP. There are reasons for the way things are done, and the largest majority of them are for very good reasons.

Step away from XP thinking and start learning the 7 way.

This article will go into more depth about the Virtual Store and what it is used for.

What you can also do is to install your IDE into an unprotected user-created folder, such as "C:\Eclipse", thereby avoiding the entire protected nature of "C:\Program Files" and "C:\Program Files (x86)".

This works especially well with programs that do not adapt well to the virtual store and protected system folders. In other words, programs that incorrectly assume that you are running with 100% administrative rights. It'll be awhile yet for developers to adapt.

Thank you for the suggestions and feedback. I'll do my due diligence and let you know if I have anything come up.

Ryan

Thanks to Microsoft sophisticated innovations, the life is far from being boring . For example - since Vista, you cannot autostart process that requires administrative rights. Hmm. Superb brains in Microsoft argue, that such processes shoud be written as services. Sounds quite reasonable. Except that service managers require administrative rights, must run in user interactive context, and people are used to autostart them. No solution.
But "Virtual store" is the most amazing thing ever. For decades, when the programmer told the code to "save the file to THIS location", the OS either raised an exception, or the file was there. Not now. The actual location of the file depends on whether you launched the program by using left or right mouse button. Fantastic! I konw that I am probably used to think "the old XP way", but I just can't help myself . What comes next?

I missed Vista entirely (thankfully) and had Windows 7 installed on my office PC earlier this year. I spent all day yesterday trying to get changes in an apache conf file to have some effect.
I was in apache's bin directory typing the following command:
htpasswd.exe -cb "C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htpasswd\passwords" username password
Of course the file never appeared where I asked for it to go, but there was no error.
So after searching the c drive I found it - you know where - C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\passwd.

SO I asked a program to create a file somewhere and the OS decided to put it somewhere else?
Really - what's MS up to? Is their OS security is so bad, that they have to come up with this sort of bullshit? I just don't get it.
As another poster pointed out if you don't install your software in the Program Files folder (like python) none of this happens. What a waste of time.

Actually, all this means is that the software you have installed (in this case, Apache) does not adhere to accepted programming standards, and incorrectly assumes that it is running with full admin rights and is attempting to write files to a system protected location.

That is hardly the fault of Microsoft...

Actually, all this means OS did not properly return an error code after
the illegal request. Not that there were a law enforcing this , but decent
programs should provide sort of feedback when something goes wrong.