pcmhacking.net

I read a post regarding file / folder permissions in a late version of Windows here a few days ago, can't find the thread, figured I'd post the fix in a new thread.
Long story short, had the motherboard die on my once trusty XP Inspiron 6400.
Bought another / later 6400 with it's own dedicated video card, threw 4g of ram in it, T7600 cpu an ssd drive and installed Win8.1.
The thing that irritated me no end was the file/folder permissions given that my account had Admin rights, though not entirely it seems.

Turning off UAC prompts meant squat, even taking ownership of files and folders.
So I enabled the Admin account, opened regedit & exported the policies assigned to the admin account & compared them to mine.
There were a few different entries, though only one was all I had to edit to give me full unrestricted access to the files / folders, and stopped me from
having to run everything as the Admin.

Iv'e since reinstalled 8.1 as the things I tried to get here were all unnecessary & possibly had consequences I'd have to rectify somewhere down the track.

The key in question;-

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
"EnableLUA"=dword:00000000

Originally "1" was my setting, "0" was the Admin.

This seems pretty odd. You shouldn't need to run anything as admin and windows 8 is end of life and not secure. I'll leave the post up incase it helps someone but it sounds like your doing something strange and specific in the first place to need this.

No it's a fresh install of 8.1, off genuine unedited retail media.
It's still supported til next year, & it's just a tuning computer for me, not one I'd use on the net everyday.
Any apps I'd copy to the programs folder would prompt a permissions popup, running apps that didn't have a manifest within them needed to be run as admin.
Running any app asks "do you want to run [whatever it was I'd click on]"
I'd try to make a shortcut, prompted it could only allow it to be made on the desktop.
Now it works without prompts with just a single digit edit in the registry.

antus wrote:I'll leave the post up incase it helps someone

As opposed to ???? deleting it.??

Yes ... It's an oddity plus it's Win8, Win8 belongs in the same pile as ME, RT and Vista!

FYI, use "REGEDIT4" versus "Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00" for pure ASCII text .reg files!

If he was having problems accessing folders from the old hard drive due to UAC, I've run into that same problem. Never liked the UAC and permissions battle, though I could always eventually get them open going to some options tab and getting permission

In general though, it protects system locations so malware cant drop DLLs that do nasty things to your system and hijack installed apps. Normally you only need to give permission when you are installing a new app so that it can write to program files. After that the app should use your documents folder for data files loaded and saved, and UAC wont be triggered. If it is triggering regularly then the app is likely set up badly and is trying to save data to your program files dir or somewhere it shouldnt be using. Better to point that app somewhere else so the warning doesnt trigger, than to turn the protection off and leave your machine open. Maybe thats not possible with some 3rd party software the OP has not named and the software is needed for him, but in general its not good advice to new users and not something you should be doing unless you have a special use case and understand the consiquences.