Administrators can write anywhere, of course. (And FAT partitions have no security at all).

Similalrly, a limited user cannot write outside their own user hive in the registry.

I know of a system running win2k SP2 which lets non-administrators create directories on root . This non-admin user
can create a directory on root on a FAT32 file system.

can you update once you find a solution.

Johnny K : Your answer sounds convincing.

BR,
~A

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/chet/archive/2006/10/java_on_vista_y.html

There is another related issue also worth noting: Vista itself has proclaimed various directories off-limits for writing. For example, it is no longer possible (or at least no longer trivial) to save files to the root directory (C:\) or to other system-level folders; non-administrator users are typically restricted to writing only within their home directories. This change will affect not only applets, like the IE7 sandbox constraints noted above, but also standalone and Java Web Start applications. This is obviously not a Java-specific problem, but is one that our users must deal with just like they will have to deal with it in other native applications; files must be saved in Vista-friendly locations.

The Security tab on the Folder Options dialog (explorer.exe - Tools->Folder Options) will list all the permissions. It’s probable that the systems have been locked down to prevent such directory creation. I presume this is happening on machines in a lab?