AntRenamer under WinXP SP2 with/without admin-rights

pedrino · Post by **pedrino** » 2008-05-13 07:01:04

Hello everybody,

I found this very nice and helpful program and installed it for testing first on my office-machine where I don't have admin-rights. It works absolutely fine and therefore last weekend I installed it at home under WinXP pro SP2 from my administrator-account.

Then I logged off as admin and logged in as a "normal" user. I started AntRenamer and made the settings I wanted. After restarting AntRenamer it again appeared with all the standard settings. After some testing I believe having found out, that the settings are not saved per user (may be in the registry or in an .ini-file or any other data-file in a user-folder) but in the installation-folder of the program where no "normal" user has write access. And if I would have write-access then all my settings would be saved there and would be valid for my family-members with own "normal" accounts too (and also their changes for me.....).

I think that this is not the correct way under Windows XP (and Vista too), so I cannot believe that AntRenamer does not know a way to save personal settings in a personal file in the personal space.

Can anyone out there please give me a hint how to get this working in the corect way????

1000 thanks in advance!

pedrino

Post by **antp** » 2008-05-13 07:34:52

Hi,
Indeed it is not a very smart way to save settings on multi-user systems. I still have to fix that.
In current version it is not possible to override it, as I thought that it was not a big problem for such program.

pedrino · Post by **pedrino** » 2008-05-13 08:01:58

Hi,

ok, then I have to uninstall it and then to install it under my "normal" account.-

But may I suggest a - in my opinion - relative simple way to give the user such an option?
Add a section to the file holding the settings (renamer.xml I believe), e.g. "setting-file-path". If the user wishes he can store here a "general path" for the settings-file (e.g. "D:\%username%\Settings\AntRenamer" and if AntRenamer finds such a path in the settings-file it should automatically read and write the individual settings there.
This still needs some manual work by the user but I believe that this is the easiest and quickest way to offer such an option.

Later you could add another way to save individual settings.......

Kind regards and - sorry, I forgot it at the beginning! - many many thanks for your real quick answer!

Regards
pedrino

wary · Post by **wary** » 2008-06-10 22:06:51

The way I like best for programs to store data is:
If a configfile in the Application Directory is found, use the application directory for configs (so you can use it portable on a thumbdrive etc.)
Else use %APPDATA%\Appname for config data.
%APPDATA% contains the path to the application data folder for the current user.
e.g. C:\Users\Abc\AppData\Roaming on Vista or C:\Documents and Settings\Abc\AppData on XP.
Maybe you could add this to Ant Renamer!

Please don't use the registry and allow a portable mode, because I like to have this tool on my thumbdrive, so I can use it when at another computer!

Post by **antp** » 2008-06-11 07:02:16

I'll never use registry, do not worry, I do not like that either

I prefer programs that are easy to carry from one PC to another, so I'll find a solution to use appdata but anyway it will still possible to use the application folder for USB keys etc.

delerious · Post by **delerious** » 2011-03-26 03:48:22

I too would like to have the option of storing the settings in the %APPDATA% directory. Any chance this feature will be implemented soon?

Post by **antp** » 2011-03-26 17:16:26

will be implemented: yes
soon: no idea

I really should take few hours to make a new version for Vista/Seven
(I know it sounds unbelievelable that it is waiting since years, but time goes so fast, and I always have things to do...)