User Account Control: Virtualize file and registry write failures to per-user locations

Applies To: Windows Server 2008 R2

The User Account Control: Virtualize file and registry write failures to per-user locations policy setting controls whether application write failures are redirected to defined registry and file system locations. This policy setting mitigates applications that run as administrator and write run-time application data to %ProgramFiles%, %Windir%, %Windir%\system32, or HKLM\Software.

The options are:

  • Enabled. (Default) Application write failures are redirected at run time to defined user locations for both the file system and registry.

  • Disabled. Applications that write data to protected locations fail.