Posted 10/13/2008 at 04:43:24am

Some time ago, I had tried to tell an application (TortoiseSVN, to be precise) to write some things under C:\Program Files on Vista. Until then, I had no idea of that new restriction and needed to fetch the SVN version of that freeware program I sometimes use.

It's understandable that an application might not be allowed to write to C:\Program Files for security reasons. However, on my case, things went really wrong. The application started downloading and downloading to the new directory it had just created, but suddenly stopped, stating that the file it had written doesn't exist. Puzzled, I tried to open this directory, but Vista told me that it didn't exist. I even wanted to delete it and let TortoiseSVN start fresh, but I couldn't. However, when trying to create a new directory with the same name, Vista told me that it already exists. In short, the files were actually written to C:\Program Files ,  but I had no way to access them. It almost sounded like I had installed a rootkit.

The solution was to disable UAC, and then the directory I wanted appeared automagically. I repeat, it's fine to not allow access to C:\Program Files for security reasons. However, I would prefer a clearer implementation, since the problem was quite cryptical. Instead of writing the files and then hiding them, I would rather have write access denied outright, preferably with an informative message. I needed a way to know what went wrong. The ideal solution would have been a message: "TortoiseSVN is trying to write some data to C:\Program Files , allow or deny?" 

Posted 10/13/2008 at 04:14:35am

I don't know if the way I perceive it is correct, but I don't think my grandmother would try to use PC Advisor. If she wants things to simply work the first time, I'm quite sure she won't try to find out what PC Advisor or any other program is telling her - she simply wants all "annoyances" out of her way. People who are likely to look at this window and try to understand what it's offering are also the ones who'd have discovered Control Panel or the Help menu, so it still sounds kind of useless. As a conclusion, I think that all tools such as PC Advisor should be developer with an average to advanced user in mind. About novice users, the best way to go is to try to make everything work out-of-the-box as much as possible, and try to keep clear of popup windows or anything similar that will prevent them from opening their favorite application immediately.