Can't save a file to the C drive

[cbrookhart]

I'm trying to save an EXE file to my C:/ drive on Windows 7. The file is from a trusted location. Windows is telling me I don't have permission to save the file to the requested location. Initially, Windows was wanting to save the file to C:\HP Chat, which is where I have support chats saved from HP. This EXE file doesn't need to go in that folder. Why won't Windows allow me to save the downloaded file on my C:\ drive?

[jamesclarke555]

It's bad practice to save things to the root of C: and this is why Windows 7 behaves this way.

[+BudMan MVC]

"Why won't Windows allow me to save the downloaded file on my C:\ drive? "

Because of the way the NTFS permissions are set by default in windows 7 -- as already mentioned, its not really good practice to save files to the root of your system drive.

But vs going into the reasons why permissions would be set this way, lets just look at the permissions directly so you will understand why you can not do what you want -- I would not suggest you dick with the defaults unless you fully understand what your doing.. But the reason why you can not save files directly to the root of c:\ is because the ntfs permissions do not allow it..

Take a look at them - and you will understand why. Remember NTFS uses the most restrictive.

So even if you are a user or a member of the admin group - your also a authenticated user, and a user -- so the when you try to do something it looks to see if there are any restrictions to what you trying to do as your lowest level permissions that pertain to your account.

Take a look at what the special permissions are

If you want to be able to write to root of C then you would need to change these permissions to allow for that - ie you could remove the authenticated users permissions so that it defaults to users or admin permissions - depending on on how they are set and what account your using would determine what you can or can not do, if UAC is enabled will also come into play, etc. Or change the permissions to allow what you want.. But again I would not suggest you change these unless you fully understand what you doing - and since you had to ask in the first place, its a given you do not ;)

Edited May 19, 2010 by BudMan

[cbrookhart]

Thanks for the reply.

I guess I didn't understand that Windows was preventing me from saving the file on the c drive on purpose. I did get into the habit on my XP computer of saving things to the C drive. I suppose that now that the file has been saved into a folder on the C drive, I can go back later and easily determine if I still need it.