Windows 10 permissions

unifex · 09 Nov 2014

I find the permissions for the WindwosApps folder rather confusing, how come I do have permissions but still can't open the folder (see the attached screenshot)?

The reason I wanted to go to this folder is that I have removed all modern Apps from the Start menu, but now decided to give one a try (Camera app to be precise). I could not find a way to start it and thought that I would simply click on the executable, as one can do with all normal programs. But, I can't open the folder even though I seem to have permissions.

Either the apps are really someplace else and this folder is not a real folder, or something is wrong here. Any ideas?

Edwin · 09 Nov 2014

unifex said:

I find the permissions for the WindwosApps folder rather confusing, how come I do have permissions but still can't open the folder (see the attached screenshot)?

The reason I wanted to go to this folder is that I have removed all modern Apps from the Start menu, but now decided to give one a try (Camera app to be precise). I could not find a way to start it and thought that I would simply click on the executable, as one can do with all normal programs. But, I can't open the folder even though I seem to have permissions.

Either the apps are really someplace else and this folder is not a real folder, or something is wrong here. Any ideas?

First, how did you remove the Camera App from the Start Menu?

Edwin · 09 Nov 2014

Anyway...,
The Camera App doesn't run from an app container in the WindowsApps folder,
you have to go to C:/Windows/Camera and SHIFT/Right Click on the .exe and choose 'Pin to Start'.
Hopefully that will work.

Slartybart · 09 Nov 2014

If you uninstall a Modern app and want it back - go to Windows Store, click My Account, then click My Apps. The store keeps track of apps installed and when - if you uninstall an app (or screw it up like I did - sort of the same thing you did)
Store should know when it was originally installed and if it's still installed. To get it back, click install for that app in the Store

Mystere · 09 Nov 2014

unifex said:

I find the permissions for the WindwosApps folder rather confusing, how come I do have permissions but still can't open the folder (see the attached screenshot)?

Well, this is a bit of voodoo. Yes, you do have those permissions, however with UAC enabled your user is running at a lower privilege level. You need elevated privileges to be able to use those rights.

Explorer runs as a lower-privilege (non-elevated) app by default. You can't right click on it and say "run as administrator" because the main instance of Explorer (the windows shell) is already running as a low-privilege app.

You can run Explorer with elevated privileges by first starting an elevated CMD prompt, then holding ctrl-shift down and right clicking on the taskbar and choosing "Exit Explorer". Then, in your command prompt run Explorer again (make sure all other explorers are closed first).

Then, when you run a file explorer, you can now view the contents of this folder. However, when I tried this in Windows 10, I found Explorer had some difficult with running in elevated mode.. and was extremely slow...

You can also open an elevated command prompt and cd to C:\Program Files\WindowsApps and issue a DIR and you can see what's in there.

EDIT:

I finally got Explorer to move to the directory, but it still wants to reset permissions... It may be that Explorer has some special condition for this folder... or it's still evaluating rights as a standard user.. In any event, the command prompt way works.