Protecting user files with File History talks about File History, which is basically a continuous backup for Windows 8. The blog discusses File History in depth, and also discusses how to integrate SkyDrive.
I want to programmatically disable backup of certain files. The files live on another server, and there's no need to back them up locally or put them on someone else's cloud. The blog and related articles doe not talk about opt'ing out of the service for application data.
How does one programmatically: (1) disable local file backups; and (2) disable cloud based backups. I'm interested in settings for both Windows 8 (desktop or laptop) and Windows Phone 8.
Related: Both Android and Apple have similar. For Android, we add android:allowBackup and set it to false in AndroidManifest.xml. For Apple, we can use kCFURLIsExcludedFromBackupKey file property or com.apple.MobileBackup extended attribute.
Jeff
In Windows Phone 8, backup and restore settings are controlled by the user through system settings. An app cannot prevent itself from being backed up. However, note that the backup does not store any data associated with third party apps but rather only stores a list of installed apps
So basically you don't need to do anything in your app to prevent local files from being stored on SkyDrive if the user has enabled backup.
In Windows 8 everything can be backed up since an admin user will have full access to his computer files, I don't think you can restrict this. If you have sensitive data you can use DataProtectionProvider to protect it.
Related
I'm converting a suite of legacy 32 bit C++ apps to run under Windows 10. These apps can run under different user accounts on the same PC and need to share the data between themselves and all the users. Some of the apps are Windows services, some are regular UI apps. There's a lot of communication between the apps and sometimes this is accomplished using shared data files. All the different user accounts need to access the shared data...
I have tried storing the shared data in C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\AppName\data
and have set the security level on that folder to Full Control for All users.
Most of the time, this works perfectly well. But occasionally, at seemingly random intervals, one of the shared data files ends up in:
C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\AppName\data
I have tried to replicate this, and it never happens when I'm looking...
If I run a simple UI app that just writes to this folder, everything is fine. The App does not need to run with elevated privileges to write to the folder.
I suspect it's when one of the Apps is trying to write to a file that is locked by another, which the code handles by using exceptions, but Windows tries to help out by writing to the VirtualStore instead. But I could be wrong...
So, to cut to the question:
Where is the 'best place' to store shared data between several apps AND user accounts, that won't end up in the VirtualStore?
Andy
Any application with a requestedExecutionLevel node in its manifest is marked as Vista compatible and the redirection to the Virtual Store is disabled.
I have a client who uses Firefox as their primary browser. We have enabled folder redirection for their Desktop and Documents folders via GPO and I was hoping to do the same with their Firefox bookmarks as all users have a desktop and access to a Windows 2008 R2 RDS session for remote access and a few have laptops.
I understand there's 2 ways to do this:
Enabled Firefox sync. My issue with this is it's all user-driven. They have to sign up for it, manage their password, enable it when using on other machines, etc...
Turn on the Appdata\Roaming folder redirection GPO. However, I've read on several different forums that this can cause issues for various applications, most commonly Adobe Reader, so I'd like to avoid it if possible
Does anyone know of another reliable server-side policy to enable syncing of Firefox bookmarks between multiple machines for users in an AD environment?
Thanks for any insight you may have.
You could sync the AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox directory, if that's an option in GPO.
Otherwise, you could place the Firefox profile folder in a directory that gets synchronized (like Documents), instead of in its default location, and then set up Firefox on each computer (using the Profile Manager) so it looks in that directory for its profile.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox
Hi How do I delete a local file in my application after copying it to the IsolatedStorage?
I want to delete only the file in local folder. Not in the Isolated Storage. I'm using WP 7.1.
tnks
You don't have write access to the folder where your application is installed. It's therefore impossible to delete the file.
Windows Phone is designed to be one of the most secure environments in the mobile market. If you look at many of the standards it enforces you will see that this is a consistent theme.
For example:
Your app does not have the ability to intercept calls or text
messages (though the library exists)
Your app cannot modify hardware buttons (there is a few MINOR
exceptions to this rule like manipulating the back button event)
Your app cannot access memory locations outside of the Isolated
Storage it is assigned by the phone.
These standards are put in place to protect the user from malicious software and to keep a clean and consistent feel across the environment.
I'm building a windows phone 7 application using silverlight 4. I store my data in Isolated storage as outlined here. The program runs with no errors. My question is where I can see the file I have saved? Is it possible to find the file in the windows phone 7 emulator?
The "Mango" SDK ships with the ISETool that can take and restore snapshots of an application's isolated storage to/from a local directory:
# Copy data from IS to directory
ISETool.exe ts xd <PRODUCT-ID> "C:\TempDirectory\IsolatedStore"
# Copy data from IS to directory
ISETool.exe rs xd <PRODUCT-ID> "C:\TempDirectory\IsolatedStore"
After some more googling, i found this post. It seems that "the emulator does not save its state when you close it."
Also:
Saving State. To test compatibility with other .Net framework environments I just re-implemented some standard Isolated Storage example code for application settings in my Silverlight application. It just works. But note, the preview emulator doesn’t hold state beyond debug sessions – so you can only test state storage in your application session at the moment.
from this post. (http://wotudo.net/blogs/wotudo/archive/2010/03/15/mix-building-a-windows-phone-7-series-silverlight-application.aspx)
The intent of isolated storage is for it to be only accessible by the application that wrote the data in that store. Isolated storage can not be shared across applications, hence being able to find the files you store in isolated storage through an explorer like experience isn't allowed.
If you need to access the files to observe the data in it, or to share it across applications, consider storing the file in a cloud service. Or if you need to look at the contents of that file for debug purposes, maybe add an option to write that file on your server.
I use this program to help me capture the data from the windows 7 phone emulator.
Where should I store preferences and setting if my goal is that my app should be runnable from a network share and the user's settings should persist regardless of the exact machine he is logged in on at the time?
Similarly, where should I store application wide settings?
The development environment in use is not .Net but can compile apps compatable with Windows 2000 or later, if that is relevant.
The users profile. Assuming that her profile is roaming, the settings will follow the user wherever she is logging in.
For applications, settings should be stored in the Application Data special folder. You can get the path to this folder using SHGetSpecialFolderPath. For more info on special folders take a look at this article on Wikipedia.
When you say "application wide settings" I assume you mean settings available to all users. These could be stored alongside the application on the network share.
It seems to me that If "the user's settings should persist regardless of the exact machine he is logged in" the only place where you can store the settings is "on the server".
Exactly how this implemented is another story. If the share is writable then storing the config in file(s) on the same path/folder as the application is the easiest way. If the share is not writable you will have to find another way to do it - like a simple http web application.
Maybe Isolated Storage is what you are looking for (in case of per-user settings / files)