Michael

Glenn,
In general the c:\program files\ area is for installations of programs by a
'trusted installer' (i.e Microsoft Installer).
It should not be used to store user data. Having said that, many legacy
programs do just that. To keep them happy MS
sort of 'mirrors' the file at
C:\users\username\AppData\local\
You may find that your actual data file is there somewhere rather than
c:\program files

I recommend that, if you have control over the location where the data is
written, you place it somewhere more to MS liking such as the users
documents or public documents area. (You can do things MS way or the hard
way, the hard way is more interesting).

There is probably a MS white paper for developers that discusses where
application documents should be placed but I no longer do professional
development so have not kept up.

Michael


<galcott@nyc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:1180710533.563715.156640@q69g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
>I am the developer of a commercial software application. One function
> in this application writes some information to a text (.txt) file
> which is placed in the same directory as the program (normally
> underneath the Program Files directory). On Vista, it turns out that
> this file is invisible to many programs, including Windows Explorer
> and Notepad (although it is visible in the File Open dialog box in a
> couple of other text editors that I tried). I do see it if I run a DIR
> command at the command prompt. I then ran the ATTRIB command and saw
> an attribute of "I" for this file, which I have never seen before. I
> haven't been able to find any information on the meaning of this
> attribute, and ATTRIB doesn't even support changing it, but my guess
> is that it has something to do with the file's lack of visibility.
> This problem does not occur on XP. I would like to find out what this
> attribute means, why the file has it, and whether it is actually the
> reason for the file not being seen.
>
> Glenn
>