To work around the problem, grant your user account modify permissions to this one file. If you don't do this, the program appears to shut down, but the process lingers after the game window disappears, and when you try to run it again later, it silently starts a second process but doesn't display anything. It's a rather unwitting denial of service attack, because if you didn't know what was going on, you'd just keep running more and more copies of the program

Here's the mail I sent to Wayne (he's got a really great program - I hope he fixes this bug):

Wayne,

Thanks for the nifty program; well worth the 15 bucks. Hey, when you get a chance, can you tweak the program so it stores its data (the high score file, I guess) in the user profile so it'll run as a non-admin?

It looks like your app already supports multiple users, so you could store it in a subfolder off the All Users folder if you need it to be shared across users. That folder is world writable (unlike Program Files).

To get the a path to this area at runtime, call SHGetFolderPath() to find the path at runtime. Try either CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS or CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA, depending on the OS you plan to run on.

It's currently sitting in my hall of shame for apps that don't run right unless you're highly privileged. There's a bit more detail about what's wrong there, if you have time to look:

http://pluralsight.com/wiki/default.aspx/Keith/SudokuHOS.html

Let me know when you have an update and I'll remove SUD.EXE from the wall

Keith Brown

Developer Security Weenie

Wayne replied the next morning (Sunday)!!

Hi Keith.

I agree with everything you say. I have been trying to get the time to make the necessary changes. I took some steps yesterday which should ensure a lifestyle change in about a month's time. That will produce the necessary time. I'll let you know when it's done.

Regards,

Wayne Gould

Puzzles by Pappocom