Rainmeter Forums

jsmorley wrote:We are exploring alternatives to address this.

How about:
PS> Set-MpPreference -EnableControlledFolderAccess Disabled

SilverAzide wrote:How about:
PS> Set-MpPreference -EnableControlledFolderAccess Disabled

It's not up to us to tell people how to secure their computer.

Yes... just being my usual facetious self.

jsmorley wrote:We are exploring alternatives to address this. Nothing decided yet, and may not be until we see what if anything they do with this in the next Spring Creators Update of Windows arriving soon.

It's quite tricky. While this Controlled Folder Access setting is "off" by default today, if a user turns it on, or if worse yet, Windows decides to default it to "on", this is going to cause massive headaches.

Spring Creators Update, as developed up to today 7 March 2018, does not have this featured to "on" by default, but it does have an indicator saying that's it's advised to turn it on which is a typical way of Microsoft saying "it's going to be on by default in feature updates" and later on will probably not even have an "off" option. Typical Microsoft.... Anyhow, for now you don't have to worry for the next 1-2 major updates but yea... A solution will be needed later on.

I'm also currently examining a solution that is going to present rainmeter as an app (like trusted and downloaded from the store) thus solving the issue forever without telling the user how to protect their PC's. Thought from what I've read in random posts, you don't like this kind of solutions but hey, I like rainmeter and I don't want it to die like that. It's my hobby after all.

kyriakos876 wrote:I'm also currently examining a solution that is going to present rainmeter as an app (like trusted and downloaded from the store) thus solving the issue forever without telling the user how to protect their PC's. Thought from what I've read in random posts, you don't like this kind of solutions but hey, I like rainmeter and I don't want it to die like that. It's my hobby after all.

Yeah, I'm not inclined to change users Windows settings, or try to trick Windows in any way, and I don't think any approach that leaves Skins in the Documents folder is going to be seamless for users in the long run.

I think we are likely to move Skins from:

C:\Users\YourName\Documents\Rainmeter\Skins\

to:

C:\Users\YourName\Rainmeter\Skins\

and change the default save location for .rmskin creation from the Desktop folder to the @Vault folder in Skins.

BTW, you can get a permanent leg-up on this yourself, by simply unloading Rainmeter, changing the SkinPath option in Rainmeter.ini to C:\Users\YourName\Rainmeter\Skins\, moving the folder from Documents to there, and restarting Rainmeter. There is no real reason not to do that right now, It's what we will be doing for you automatically in a future release. Doesn't matter what is in any Layouts you might have previously saved or that are applied by any .rmskin you download, that SkinPath option is never set or changed by a Layout. That SkinPath option is "written" to any Layouts you save, but not ever "read" from them.

Then feel free to turn that setting "on" in Windows if you like having Microsoft tell you how you can use your computer. Rainmeter won't be impacted. Just everything else that you use.