Infinite Application Data

[seekermeister]

logicearth

I logged in as Administrator before I read you last post, and ran the installation of Opera 10.01 to a separate folder than I had with 10. Rather than it popping an error about not being able to find the installer, it completed the installation normally.

I'm still having a problem finding the program files that go into Documents and Settings, because the only place where it seems to have any Opera locations is in my username account, but I'm still digging around.

At this point, it appears that the problems are limited to the user account, rather than the OS in general. If that is true, it would be alot easier to delete the account, and creat another, rather than starting from scratch.

 

[zBobG]

Junctions

There is a good MS article (a very long read) that describes some of the functions and features of junctions and why they are designed as they are: Managing Roaming User Data.

As to the OP: Yes, use 'run as Admin', that's almost always the most uncomplicated method of installing something. You will almost always get an option of installing for a (particular) single user if that's what you intended.

files that go into Documents and Settings: Are you talking about configuration files and that kind of stuff? In Vista and Seven I think those files should be in a (Opera?) folder in: Users/<user>/Documents/...

The rest is somewhat off topic:

Junctions are far more useful then backwards support.

It is not junctions that are broken, it is your understanding. No offense.

I never said junctions were not useful, I did say they were broken. How you can consider
.../Application Data/
.../Application Data/Application Data/
.../Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/
and so on as not broken is beyond my understanding.

And it has everything to do with permissions. Because the default permission that is set on the junctions for backwards support, have one and only one permission that gives the Access Denied. Everyone, DENY, List folder / read data. As long as this permission is set, not even the super powerful SYSTEM account gets access.

This is of course from the point of view of the user viewing the folders. It's not a problem that you don't have access, it's a problem when you SEE the duplicated folders regardless whether you can enable access. Yes, I can change permissions and access the files in any of those folders and, yes, I realize that the files are 'virtualized'. I just don't think it's useful to see 8 'duplicates' of a folder and all its 'duplicate' files. And, yes, once you are aware of what is going on a user can just ignore the 'duplicates'.

The relevant problem is that programs are stupid, they cannot ignore the 'duplicates'. A program does not ordinarily distinguish a junction from a 'real' folder. Really off topic: I know of no simple way of programmatically determining if a folder is really a junction.

If your applications choke when they reach an Access Denied then your applications are the ones that are broken. In programming it is called error handling.

My applications have no trouble with ACCESS DENIED, they simply assume the folder (or file) is not there. Rather the problem is the 'duplicates' seen when access is allowed particularly when running in admin mode which is a common method for running a maintenance program or installer.

And, yes, there are simple (and not so simple) programmatic workarounds for this issue. The very word 'workaround' is proof that junctions can be described as borked. Note that I did not say 'not useful'.

 

[logicearth]

I never said junctions were not useful, I did say they were broken. How you can consider
.../Application Data/
.../Application Data/Application Data/
.../Application Data/Application Data/Application Data/
and so on as not broken is beyond my understanding.

That doesn't make it broken, as it is doing exactly as it is suppose to do. To stop infinite loops like that it was given a specific DENY permission on Everyone. A Junction points to a target location, this is done at the file system level if the junction points back at its parent it will of course see itself just like it should. NOT BROKEN.

My applications have no trouble with ACCESS DENIED, they simply assume the folder (or file) is not there. Rather the problem is the 'duplicates' seen when access is allowed particularly when running in admin mode which is a common method for running a maintenance program or installer.

Running in Admin mode? Something is wrong with your system or you are referring to other junctions. Because the permission applied to the default junctions prevents everything from accessing it. The whole point of junctions is not to know they are junctions, otherwise what would be the point? They must act and be folders.

 

[MacGyvr]

reinstall...yes, but if I don't know the whys, I'm going to continue to have problems because I must change some permissions to make my computer behave as I require. I will be much more careful about any changes that I make, especially in regards to the use of Take Ownership with junctions, but one way or another I will get what I want.

You have not yet explained what it is that you want that you think you have to change permissions to get.

 

[rsvr85]

I experienced exactly the same through taking ownership of it, any executable/installer i tried to run, failed. The only fix i found was a complete reinstall.

 

[zBobG]

User Won't See Folders

This is a possible solution to the user seeing the 'duplicate' folders (i.e. Application Data) when the user does not want to see those folders.

In Control Panel->Folder Options on the View tab, checkmark "Hide protected operating system files". This will hide all the 'duplicated' folders from the user, it WILL NOT however hide those folders from a program such as a maintenance utility or installer.

I don't know if helps anything at all, but for the casual user (or wannabe geek) it should help to reduce some user confusion.

You will get "Access denied" if you try to click those 'duplicate' folders until you take ownership of them. Doing that solves no problems so it is not recommended. I assume if you had taken ownership and that that caused problems you could return the permissions back to "System" only although I haven't tried that.

I believe there is also a "Reset Permissions" procedure in the tutorial section on this website and also on the VistaForums website.

 

[seekermeister]

zBobG,

The only thing that particularly caught my eye in your post was that regarding "Reset Permissions", but a search of that section found nothing. If it is there, it must be under a title without those words. Could you provide a link?

 

[zBobG]

Default Permissions

Here is a MS article about http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313222#appliestoresetting default permissions, be sure to read the warning about halfway down the page.

I could not find anything either in the Vista or Seven tutorial pages for a global reset, so either I misremember (very likely) or I was thinking of resetting to Admin only status for a particular folder - that might work though when used on the parent <user> folder.

 

[seekermeister]

Thanks, but that sounds a bit too risky to me, even if it applied to W7, but it doesn't. It doesn't even include all versions of XP or Vista. If I have greater problems than I do now, I may give it a shot, but since I started using the Administrator account, my previous issues seem to have disappeared. When in the right paradigm, I'm going to delete the effected user account and recreat it.

 

[flemur13013]

Application data\Application Data easy solution.

"Application data\Application Data\..." broken? Yes, it's broken, but it's called "works as designed" and the design is stupid.

I solved the recursive "Application Data" problems by simply deleting the first duplicate "Application Data" folder (junction) wherever it appeared.* Everything works fine, including lots of XP programs/installs. I did create a restore point first, tho.

*FWIW, if you have problems doing this with "Windows Explorer", try the "FreeCommander" file browser and its "Find" command.

 

[logicearth]

"Application data\Application Data\..." broken? Yes, it's broken, but it's called "works as designed" and the design is stupid.

It is only broken when YOU alter the permissions that govern these junction points.

 

[CreeDo]

I just recently got this issue, and fell into it the exact same way - attempting to take ownership where I apparently wasn't supposed to. Basically I ran the dos command to give myself ownership of everything on C:\.

I would never have noticed this but firefox stopped working. I could only run firefox as administrator.

I got lucky, had a system restore point from 5 days ago and went back to it. Took a very long time (1 hour plus, which from what I read means something is broken and it will hang). But it eventually did complete, had a hung boot and an unexpected reboot. Third try was the charm, windows has booted and firefox now runs without using run as administrator.

The recursive appdata shortcut/junction thing was still there but I followed flemur's advice and deleted it. Everything within appdata except the shortcut got backed up to another folder.

It seems to be fine, none of my commonly used programs are crashing. So if anyone else googled their way to this, hope this helps.

 

[mytmouse]

All,

Thanks for all your help and knowledge. Here is what I ended up doing and it only took a few minutes.

a) Download a program called JunctionBox
b) Extract
c) Run JunctionBox.exe
d) Select "All Profiles and System Junctions" from dropdown.
d) Click "Backup Junctions" button.
e) Name the backup file whatever and let it do its thing.
f) Click "Restore Junctions" button.
g) Select "DefaultJunctions.ntj"
h) Let it do its thing.
i) When you look in Windows Explorer, some of your folders will have little arrows on them that look like the "Shortcut to.." arrows. Those are the junctions that have been restored.
j) When you click on them, you get the "Access is denied" error message that I hate.
k) That was easy and it all looks good now. I'll post if I find out otherwise.


You do not need to re-install if you do this procedure

Here is the link to download this program: Download Junction Box from SourceForge.net

Good Luck

 

[Callender]

Take Ownership

Okay so I just had the same problem. Managed to fix it by deleting the duplicate application data folders and resetting everything using Junction Box and Link Magic.

I now understand the correct way to navigate to app data folders but my question is as follows:

Is there software available like Take Ownership that can be used on a temporary basis to take ownership of a folder then restore ownership as it was before? There's a utility that can do that for registry keys but I've not found one that can do it for folders.

 

[Callender]

Is there software available like Take Ownership that can be used on a temporary basis to take ownership of a folder then restore ownership as it was before? There's a utility that can do that for registry keys but I've not found one that can do it for folders.

Just to answer my own question - TakeOwnershipEx is one solution that can be used if needed. The advantage is that it can restore previous permissions if you did,t make a note of them before "Taking Ownership"