Windows 7 inetpub wwwroot read only

Question

On my Windows 7 computer, c:\inetpub\wwwroot is not updateable unless I turn off User Account Control. What's up with that?

Answer 1

There are two things going on here:

1) The WWWROOT directory, by default, allows full permissions to anyone in the Administrators group, but read-only permissions to Everyone.

2) Processes started in an interactive login session do not get the Administrators group token by default, even if the user is a member of that group. In order to get that token attached to your process, you need to elevate through a User Account Control consent prompt. (You can also elevate a process to have an Administrators token if the user account isn't in the Administrators group, but you will be prompted for the credentials of a user that does)

The suggestion that you turn down UAC's settings is not a good one -- this is a systemwide setting that directly, and negatively, affects the security of your entire system. Instead, do the right thing: change the permissions on the wwwroot directory to give your user account full access.