Difference between Program Files and ProgramData?

Question

How do I decide which of my application's files go in Program Files (FOLDERID_ProgramFilesX64) and which go in ProgramData? (FOLDERID_ProgramData)? I don't understand what the reason is for splitting up my application's fixed files into these two categories or how I should decide which file goes in what.

For example - image files which my application displays, are they "program" or "data"?

Is there any problem with just putting everything under one or the other?

The application is installed for All Users and has no user-specific configuration files or data.

Answer 1

Program Files is for executables and other static files that came as part of the installation. ProgramData is for user-agnostic data generated during execution such as shared cache, shared databases, shared settings, shared preferences, etc. User-specific data goes in the AppData folder. Note that these are for non-user-visible data. User-visible data belongs in the documents folder (or music, video, custom sibling folder, etc.).

Please see Special Folders and Custom Folders for a detailed explanation. Note that the terminology used varies slightly between the name used in the documentation here, the name of the folder, and the name used by various enumerations used to get these paths from the system.