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

  • Article

Applies to

  • Windows 11
  • Windows 10

Describes the best practices, location, values, policy management and security considerations for the User Account Control: Virtualize file and registry write failures to per-user locations security policy setting.

Reference

This policy setting enables or disables the redirection of the write failures of earlier applications to defined locations in the registry and the file system. This feature mitigates applications that historically ran as administrator and wrote runtime application data to %ProgramFiles%, %Windir%, %Windir%\system32, or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\.

This feature can be disabled for applications on devices running at least Windows Vista because it's unnecessary.

Possible values

  • Enabled

    Setting this value facilitates the runtime redirection of application write failures to defined user locations for the file system and the registry.

  • Disabled

    Applications that write data to protected locations fail.

Best practices

  1. If you run applications that aren't Windows Vista-compliant, enable this security policy to prevent the possibility that these older applications could write data to unsecure locations.
  2. If you only run at least Windows Vista–compliant applications, this feature is unnecessary so you can disable this policy.

Location

\Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options

Default values

The following table lists the actual and effective default values for this policy. Default values are also listed on the policy’s property page.

Server type or GPO Default value
Default Domain Policy Not defined
Default Domain Controller Policy Not defined
Stand-Alone Server Default Settings Enabled
DC Effective Default Settings Enabled
Member Server Effective Default Settings Enabled
Client Computer Effective Default Settings Enabled

Policy management

This section describes features and tools that are available to help you manage this policy.

Restart requirement

None. Changes to this policy become effective without a device restart when they're saved locally or distributed through Group Policy.

Group Policy

All auditing capabilities are integrated in Group Policy. You can configure, deploy, and manage these settings in the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) or Local Security Policy snap-in for a domain, site, or organizational unit (OU).

Security considerations

This section describes how an attacker might exploit a feature or its configuration, how to implement the countermeasure, and the possible negative consequences of countermeasure implementation.

Vulnerability

Earlier applications might not write data to secure locations.

Countermeasure

Enable the User Account Control: Virtualize file and registry write failures to per-user locations setting.

Potential impact

None. This non-impact state is the default configuration.