I've never really understood why they needed to do that. All supported OSes have some provision for links, the game might need to run from a certain place, but I'm not sure why they can't just keep all the games in the same place and just link to the necessary directory.

AFAIK it's because more recent version of Windows can have a lot of trouble with things installed in Program Files due to UAC shenanigans. I think GOG started having the installers go to \GOG Games rather than \Program Files\GOG Games to avert that.

The swap from GOG.com to GOGcom was earlier, I think some of the old DOS games couldn't handle the period? Obviously the period was the problem, but I'm not sure about blaming the DOS games.

Well considering the .com extension is considered an executable, an executable folder would be utterly confusing....

I actually really liked making com files...

actually the move from program files was to work around a bug in dosbox

Source? Cause the v1.x PG2 installer installed it to %programfiles%\GOGcom, not %programfiles%\GOG.com

Edit: PG2, not PG

I dunno now dude it's in one of the README files for DOSBOX.

here we are, don't know if this is still up to date now but I found this with a little searching, it's from the README.

Important!: In Windows Vista/7 the configuration file won't work correctly
if it is located in "Windows" or "Program Files" folder or their subfolders,
or directly on c:\, so the best place for storing extra configuration files is
for example: C:\oldgames

Ah, a case of UAC and permissions. Same reason JA2 has troubles if installed in Program Files.
Not a bug, a Windows Security feature, or a mistake by programmers, take your pick.

It's a security feature. Microsoft is slowly taking more and more the route of what Unix has done for the last two decades, which is prevent write (and sometimes read) access to users who don't qualify. However based on how the OS acts, it is shoe-horned when looking at specific directory listings for the core OS and not anywhere else, which makes it inconsistent and annoying.

I remember trying to patch Morrowind with the unofficial code patch, while in Program Files every time it tried to do a patch (and there was about 3000 of them, converting floating point to using MMX or some conversion which was more stable) it would ask for permission to write the change. Annoying as hell. Became obvious what was happening when i copied it to a ramdrive and did the patches. After that i concluded you don't put anything in Program Files that does any local saving or modifications, or needs any patching. Games like Diablo 2 and Sacred might not be able to save games anymore.

Yes, it is a security feature that has been around since NT 3.5, and not a bug in DOSBox. That was my point.

Unsure about this. What do you mean shoe-horned when looking at specific directory listings?

I mean whenever the OS gets a request for a file that the function to open the file specifically looks for "C:\windows\" or "C:\Program Files\" and if it contains either of those two it runs extra codes and checks that you can't enable on directories that you'd like to... Looks something like this... instr might not be the exact function that's used, but for example purposes it works...

[code]
FILE* fopen(char *path, int permissions) {

if (instr(path, "c:\windows") || instr(path, "c:\program files")) {
//extra code for these two directories and anything under them
}

//otherwise normal code goes here...
}
[/code]

So basically you say that if the file requests access to %WINDIR% or %ProgramFiles%, extra code is run, even if you do have full access to the directory it's going to be using, but if it's going to look at e:\Movies that you don't have full access, the extra code part won't be run?

Correct.

Of course it may look at normal permissions for read/only and who can access it, but those two directories have extra stuff activated only because of what they are called, rather than having a configuration letting us specify if and where these extra checks should be.

And of course if there IS a way to configure other directories, it probably isn't documented in a way that the user can take advantage of it. Quite a few behaviors of Windows is obscure, and not really open for modification or adaption. As i recall there was a huge debate over windows 2000, specifically the home edition and the server edition, being that you had a limited number of connections for the standard user, while the server version (being something like $800) gave unlimited connections. Makes sense, except the OS's are IDENTICAL, even a programmer at M$ said it was a few registry hacks to unlock the full potential of the kernel. (I'm not sure where the source is)

May I get a source for that, since I don't recall encountering it?

May be a classid case, in which case they can be modified, assuming you do read the documentation.

Would also like a source for that, since the only connection issues I recall was a misunderstanding with the half-open connections on XP.