Bug? My documents and Win7

[PeterT]

Hello,

Maybe I found a bug.
I set all files in a specific folder to be installed into "My Documents".
When I am logged in as Administrator in Win7 then everything is ok.
But when I log in as a normal user then when I start the installation program, I need to provide the administrator's password (so far so good), but then the installation copies the folder into administrator's My documents instead of the user's My documents.

I tried to build the installer without "Vista/7 : run as administrator", but this is unusable because then the program cannot create the destination folder under Program files.

I tried to install another software of our company (which installer has been done by somebody else using another installer-creating package) and it installed the My documents stuff correctly into the My documents of the user.
Therefore I believe that it is a bug of Install Creator Pro (version 2.0 build #38).

[Yves]

Hello,

You are right, this is a known issue which hasn't been fixed yet. It's quite hard to fix in the current version (we need to redo a large part for that) so it might be fixed only in IC3.

[PeterT]

Well, this is a major problem for me.
I hope that we will see version 3 soon...

For now I must create a workaround to sell my product to somebody till tomorrow. I do not like too much the idea that the folders should be created by the application itself because it may be confusing for the user (see nothing after installation until he does not start the application).

I looked a bit into the problem and now I can see its reason: if I ask for the My Documents folder using the usual call to SHGetFolderPath from an already "elevated" program then I get the folder belonging to the administrator.

If you already looked more deeply into the problem maybe you know the answer to my question: how to know the My documents folder of the "originating" user? (Or at least how to knot that user's name to be able to get its "access token" to pass to the SHGetFolderPath call).
Or is it "impossible" to know after the program has been already "elevated"?

[Yves]

We didn't find a way to retrieve it after the program has been elevated, but maybe such a way exists. One of the solutions is to cut the program in 2 parts and run the second one (elevated) from the first one (non elevated). Until now it's the solution we've chosen for IC3 (not yet fully implemented otherwise I would send you a pre-version).

[PeterT]

Thanks for the information.

That was also my idea how to implement it, I just wondered whether there would be a better way.

Then I started to think: I could make my program (1), which would get the My Document's location, then it would start the installer created by IC (2) (that one would run elevated) and then another my program (3) would be invoked from the installer to copy files into the folder remembered by (1).
The problem is how to transfer data (the path to the original My Documents folder) from (1) to (3). A File could be used for that, but where to put it? (I am quite new to installations and special folders and versions of Windows).

So maybe it would be a nice and easy enhancement to add a new command line switch /Dn=xxxxxxxxx where n would be a digit (0..9) and xxxxxx any characters. This way (1) could give data to (2) to remember and there would be macros #data0# till #data9# which could be put anywhere including the cmd line options in the View/Run tab (when invoking (3)).
So you may consider... (but maybe this idea is too messy and too one-purpose)

[Yves]

Hmm, this feature has already been implemented in ICP3, maybe I could send you an old (stable) version of ICP3... (not sure though, I've to check).

Note: you wouldn't need (3), as you can specify macros in the name of the installation directory (in the File Options / Windows tab).

[PeterT]

Yes, please. If possible I would like to have such a version.

You should have my e-mail address (from the registration, I suppose) to send me either the file or link to it.