How to give Read/Write permissions to a Folder during installation using .NET

I guess my other post was deleted for being a little too general, so I've refined it below:

The thing to do is make a custom action. It's pretty straightforward, check out the MSDN walkthrough for writing a C# custom action here. You'll put your permission-changing code inside the Install method:

Follow the first few steps from the link to get a new installer project referenced from your installer solution. You have to do it this way, so you can build a dll that is called at the end of installation.

Actually setting read/write privileges for Users was a little trickier, and the closest I could get was to set for Authenticated Users. I cobbled together a few other solutions I found on the Internet to come up with this:

public override void Install(IDictionary stateSaver) { // This gets the named parameters passed in from your custom action string folder = Context.Parameters["folder"]; // This gets the "Authenticated Users" group, no matter what it's called SecurityIdentifier sid = new SecurityIdentifier(WellKnownSidType.AuthenticatedUserSid, null); // Create the rules FileSystemAccessRule writerule = new FileSystemAccessRule(sid, FileSystemRights.Write, AccessControlType.Allow); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(folder) && Directory.Exists(folder)) { // Get your file's ACL DirectorySecurity fsecurity = Directory.GetAccessControl(folder); // Add the new rule to the ACL fsecurity.AddAccessRule(writerule); // Set the ACL back to the file Directory.SetAccessControl(folder, fsecurity); } // Explicitly call the overriden method to properly return control to the installer base.Install(stateSaver); } 

Then, when you create your custom action, edit its properties, and add something like this under the CustomActionData property:

/folder="[CommonAppDataFolder][ProductName]" 

private static void GrantAccess(string file) { bool exists = System.IO.Directory.Exists(file); if (!exists) { DirectoryInfo di = System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(file); Console.WriteLine("The Folder is created Sucessfully"); } else { Console.WriteLine("The Folder already exists"); } DirectoryInfo dInfo = new DirectoryInfo(file); DirectorySecurity dSecurity = dInfo.GetAccessControl(); dSecurity.AddAccessRule(new FileSystemAccessRule( new SecurityIdentifier(WellKnownSidType.WorldSid, null), FileSystemRights.FullControl, InheritanceFlags.ObjectInherit | InheritanceFlags.ContainerInherit, PropagationFlags.NoPropagateInherit, AccessControlType.Allow)); dInfo.SetAccessControl(dSecurity); } 

The above code will set the access rights of the folder to full control/ read-write to every user (everyone).

The behavior is by design. The programs should not be modifying themselves (hence their installation directory) for anything but updates (which again can be done with Windows installer without a problem). If you're using .NET, isolated storage is an excellent location to store user data.

DirectoryInfo info = new DirectoryInfo(path[x]); DirectorySecurity security = info.GetAccessControl(); security.AddAccessRule(new FileSystemAccessRule(logonName, FileSystemRights.Modify, InheritanceFlags.ContainerInherit, PropagationFlags.None, AccessControlType.Allow)); security.AddAccessRule(new FileSystemAccessRule(logonName, FileSystemRights.Modify, InheritanceFlags.ObjectInherit, PropagationFlags.None, AccessControlType.Allow)); info.SetAccessControl(security); 

Setting the inherit part is also important if you want to save and access more than just one file in the ProgramData folder.

As it has been mentioned above Users group does not have write permission in Program Files. If you don't want to deal with installer class or Wix (if it is a simple program), just prefer installing your software under a Windows Volume.

I am talking about Visual Studio Setup Wizard: Change Application Folder 'DefaultLocation' Property from [ProgramFilesFolder] to [WindowsVolume][Manufacturer][ProductName] in File System on Target Machine.

Change the defaultLocation to: C:[Manufacturer][ProductName] you can change the drive C with whatever drive you like. See this picture

I stumbled also into filesystem permissions while trying to write into SQLite database after application was installed.

As mentioned in this thread, data files can be placed into user's AppData-folder instead of modifying permissions in Program Files and such. AppData also has user permissions set to allow writing as default.

In Setup project, this is done by adding "User's Application Data Folder" into setup File System, under which application folder can be created. Database file is then added into this application folder. Application folder with database file will be created during setup inside AppData-folder.

Code for creating a database connection string pointing to AppData-folder is as follows:

public static Environment.SpecialFolder DataPath = Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData; public static string ConnectionString = "Data Source=" + Environment.GetFolderPath(DataPath) + "\\ApplicationName\\database.SQLite"; 

I used this solution with Visual Studio 2019.

I put the folders I want to copy in a folder in the Application Folder section of the Setup Wizard which is in the C:\Program Files (x86) directory.

Then when the program runs it checks if the folders needed are in the right place, and if not copies them to the correct directory.

So the code would be:

If Not My.Computer.FileSystem.DirectoryExists("directory") And My.Computer.FileSystem.DirectoryExists("directory") Then My.Computer.FileSystem.CopyDirectory("C:\Program Files (x86)\APPFOLDER", "C:\ProgramData\APPFOLDER") Else End If 

Hope this helps.