Windows – Allow Non-Elevated Programs to Write to Program Files Directory

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I am tired of old applications behaving strangely because they cannot write to the "Program Files" directory. I don't want to have to manually set them to run as administrator, and I am not particularly concerned about security–in addition to trusting the applications I run, I only ever boot into Windows to run games (so the partition doesn't contain any valuable data), and I usually end up reinstalling Windows every couple of months anyway.

How can I make Program Files and Program Files (x86) into normal directories (from a permissions perspective) that every application is able to write to, regardless of permissions?

I happen to be running Windows 10 at the moment, but ideally I'd like to know how to do this on 8/7/Vista as well, for future reference.

Edit: I should note that I happen to be using an enterprise edition of Windows 10, so I can modify group policies or whatever else if need be.

Best Answer

You can get applications to write to Program Files by changing the folder's security settings.

  1. Go to properties and select the Security tab.

  2. Click Advanced.

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  3. Change ownership to your own account instead of TrustedInstaller, and let it propagate. This allows you to add yourself to the list of principals.
  4. Click 'Add' and type your username, press 'Check names' and it autocorrects.

Now you can add 'Full control' for your username, and all applications you run should be able to write to this folder and its subfolders.

This helped me get Chrome to save OpenVPN profiles directly to its install directory.

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