Settings saved but no WTF folder
 

Ok, so I reset my addon folders by deleting them out of my World of Warcraft folder. That would be the Interface Folder and the WTF Folder. After that I downloaded the addons I needed and set up my whole UI, exactly like I want it. The problem is that I set it up without running wow as an administrator, therefore there was no WTF Folder to save the settings to. As long as I run the game normally, everything still works fine, but I have two accounts and I need the WTF folder to be able to transfer the settings to the other account. Also, I have no way to back up these settings and it took me a long time to actually get everything set up. When I run the game as an administrator, it runs it as if I had never changed any addon settings and creates a new WTF folder. Obviously the setting are being saved somehow, but how can I get them to stick, even when I run as administrator?

Also, if I run the game as an admin it creates the WTF folder. Then I run the game again, not as an admin, it has all of the addon settings intact. Blizzard hasn't provided me with any assistance of course because they consider this an addon issue. Can anyone point me in the right direction to being able to bring all of these settings into the WTF folder?

We need some information on your system - is it Win XP, Win Vista, or Win7?

Where is your WoW folder?

Sure, I'm running Windows 7, and my WoW folder is located at C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft. Interesting note here, I moved the WoW folder to C:\Users\Public\Documents\Blizzard Entertainment\World of Warcraft at one point to see if that would help. When I did this is ran WoW "as if" I had run it as an admin. So I didn't have any of my saved settings anymore, and it created and managed the WTF folder fine. I then deleted the WTF Folder again and moved the whole folder back to C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft. And it's back to how it was in the first place, I have all my saved settings, but it won't create and manage the WTF folder unless I run as admin. I also tried running WoW from a second windows profile with admin rights and it created and managed the WTF folder but I didn't have any of my settings.

It seems like WoW has my settings saved somewhere, but when it has the ability to write the WTF folder, it just reads the settings from there... which is no settings.

I have never understood people running aps as "Admin" if you want the user account to have access to the folder, such as the WoW folder, change the settings on that folder to allow that account to have full access, or at least RW.

I have 2 installs of WoW and I have a seperate account (called Warcraft). The folders that Warcraft is installed to have their Security set to allow the account Warcraft to have complete control.

I've done this... changed the settings to give WoW full access. It still won't write the WTF folder unless I run it as admin.

Hmmm, it really seems like a completely different installation when I run as admin. Even the "Remember Account Name" feature changed if I Run as Administrator. This is really difficult and I spent hours and hours putting together my UI, so I really need to try to keep these settings, but I don't know what to do... I've tried everything.

I thinking that when you "Run as" the settings are being saved somewhere account specific. Different places for different accounts, since I don't use Win 7 yet, its only a guess.

I thought about that too... When I use the run as admin, it starts saving them to the WoW directory WTF folder like it's supposed to. When I don't use the run as admin it's saving somewhere else, but I don't know where. I'm wondering if it could just be built into the addons them selves. But if it was I wouldn't know how to get it to save to the WTF folder instead.

Program Files is a protected folder any non admin changes are stored in a virtual folder.

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\

your better off installing to a non-protected folder (ex. c:\WoW)
if you don't patching will be a pain with pre-downloading not working right

Now that I have slept -

When you install into Program Files (or Program files (x86)) in Vista or 7, it requires Admin privileges to write to that folder. This is fine - you don't need to write your WTF folder there.

Vista and 7 both use a virtualization system that says, "Okay, no admin privilege, and I have to write to a protected area - so it's being redirected to another folder". You can only write to these protected folders if you turn virutalization off for that program AND give your useraccount write-access to the folder.

This is the one that ShetiPhan mentioned - C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\ - and then in subfolders from there. It'd look like WoW or World of Warcraft\WTF\ and the usual mess, I believe.

So all of the WTF and other folders are actually there when you don't run as Admin.

I get around this by keeping WoW installed in an area that's not protected under virtualization - C:\WoW, for example.

Folders protected under Virtualization are Program Files, Program Files (x86), and the main Windows folder - and their subfolders, of course.

EDIT:
Oh, and when you moved it to your Documents folder - it ignored virtualization, and wrote in the default folder, because "Documents" is in C:\Users, which isn't protected.

Program Files isn't even the folder WoW installs to by default anymore, iirc.