MS Vista and its virtual store

[JosAH]

Greetings,

This question sort of belongs in the Java Forum (and it is quite technical) but it
also belongs elsewhere because it belongs in some MS Vista forum. Nevertheless
here's my question:

I bought another laptop lately that runs Vista; I installed a new update of Sun's
Java stuff and it was installed in C:\Program Files\Java as always. Java uses
a so called 'extension' mechanism which basically boils down to compiled
Java code being stored in C:\Program Files\Java\<mum ble>\ext where the
<mumble> part doesn't matter much here.

When I want to store something there it ends up entirely somewhere else:
C:\Users\Jos\Ap pData\VirtualSt ore\<same as above>

It seems to be a protection measure by Microsoft. So far so good, I thought I
could live with that but: if I even dare to change something in that directory
all the rest I had previously stored in there doesn't seem to work anymore. It's as
if some shadow version of it all is kept somewhere (I can't find it but I'm starting
to believe in ghosts by now).

I googled a bit and I run my stuff with administrator rights which should get rid
of all this dark magic but alas. Of course I can migrate my stuff and tell Java
to look for it somewhere else but my customers aren't that clever: the stuff must
be installed in the orginal <mumble>\ext directory where it belongs according
to their default Java virtual machine.

I went through the entire locally available help and through most of google but I
couldn't find anything useful except for complaints about that VirtualStore thing.
Who, by Jove, came up with this bloody misery and how can I cut its throat?

A pint of rum for anyone who can make this misfeature walk down the plank.

kind regards,

Jos

[drhowarddrfine]

A pint of rum for anyone who can make this misfeature walk down the plank.

format c:
 

After a pint of rum, I couldn't walk down the plank myself.

[JosAH]

format c:
 

After a pint of rum, I couldn't walk down the plank myself.

That's not an option; more and more customers want those shiny semi-transparent
tooltips and windows so I have to deal with it. There must be a way to turn off
that preposterous feature. It blocks Java's standard extension mechanism.

kind regards,

Jos

[NeoPa]

Jos, I'm going to move this to the Windows forum. I expect that if anyone knows about this they will.

I'll maybe pop a link through to it in the Experts' Help thread too.

I hope you find someone can help. I'm afraid that my Windows experience is all pre-Vista (cause it's a pile of old carp IMHO).

[jg007]

I read an explanation of this and the gist seems to be that rather than allow programs to write where they want in areas that may allow them to cause problems / viruses etc Vista creates virtual registry keys and virtual directories that should appear transparent to the users / applications in a similar sort of way to how sandox programs work

I don't think that you are likely to be able to stop this and I think you will have to just try to adapt the code to work around it.

also the reason it works as administrator is because the system does not use these Virtual path's etc as the administrator has permissions to write most areas.

possible helpful links -

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927387

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

[JosAH]

Thanks for the reply and the links; I'm beginning to understand that trickery-dickery
and I don't like it one bit. Those files are kept out of the way on a per user basis
which can turn into a mess. I'm afraid I have to stay away from that 'protected'
Program Files directory completely. Oh well, back to the drawing board ;-)

kind regards,

Jos