Cakewalk "can't save to" chosen location

[winkpain]

I am trying to save some CW bundled projects to an SD card for taking to another machine. The card is not write protected, has plenty of room on it, and I am freely able to write, create, drag-and-drop files onto this card. However, when choosing a folder (any folder) on that card for saving my bundle files, CW returns with a message that it "can't" and to "Please choose another location". I can then just save the bundle to my desktop and drag-and-drop it to the desired location, so it's not a critical issue, but....

What is preventing CW from saving here? Are SD cards special in this regard?

[Nigel Mackay]

Is there possibly a thing with administrator rights?
 

[winkpain]

6 minutes ago, Nigel Mackay said:

Is there possibly a thing with administrator rights?
 

It feels like it. But what do I look at to see? Folder Properties on the SD card don't have a Security tab where permissions are set...

[gustabo]

Run CW as administrator as see if that makes a difference.

 

[Nigel Mackay]

As a quick sort of test, run Cakewalk as Administrator. Save an empty project.

[Nigel Mackay]

But with no Security tab it seems unlikely to be the problem.

[winkpain]

4 minutes ago, gustabo said:

Run CW as administrator as see if that makes a difference.

 

I have CW set to always run as admin.

 

[winkpain]

Perhaps it's a Windows 10 thing? I just tried the exact saving process, onto the same SD card, from my CW on the Windows 7 machine and it worked fine.

[slartabartfast]

2 hours ago, winkpain said:

I have CW set to always run as admin.

 

So try to run it as the same user that you normally log in as i.e. do not run as administrator. Cakewalk run as administrator has a different set of permissions than Cakewalk run as an ordinary user. Likely your removable drive is owned by your ordinary user account, as is your desktop so that files there are able to be copied back and forth. When running as administrator you are not running under the same account, and even though the program is running under an account that is an "administrator," that account does not necessarily have access to resources owned or limited to a particular account. If you need to have Cakewalk run as administrator (that is usually only needed if you have some unresolved ownership/permissions issue already) then try changing ownership/permissions on the removable drive to match the owner of Cakewalk when run as administrator. 

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-change-ownership-of-files-and-folders-in-windows-10/

 

[winkpain]

3 minutes ago, slartabartfast said:

So try to run it as the same user that you normally log in as i.e. do not run as administrator. Cakewalk run as administrator has a different set of permissions than Cakewalk run as an ordinary user. Likely your removable drive is owned by your ordinary user account, as is your desktop so that files there are able to be copied back and forth. When running as administrator you are not running under the same account, and even though the program is running under an account that is an "administrator," that account does not necessarily have access to resources owned or limited to a particular account. If you need to have Cakewalk run as administrator (that is usually only needed if you have some unresolved ownership/permissions issue already) then try changing ownership/permissions on the removable drive to match the owner of Cakewalk when run as administrator. 

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-change-ownership-of-files-and-folders-in-windows-10/

 

Fascinating! That is all good stuff. Thanks. I'll give that a go.

[Nigel Mackay]

Don't know what plugins you have installed, but some of them put their licensing info and/or presets in %USERS%\AppData, so you might have to uninstall and reinstall them.

[winkpain]

11 hours ago, Nigel Mackay said:

Don't know what plugins you have installed, but some of them put their licensing info and/or presets in %USERS%\AppData, so you might have to uninstall and reinstall them.

Not sure what you mean here. How would reinstalling plugins make a difference in CW saving to a SD card?

[Nigel Mackay]

Nothing. Except if you fix the problem by not running Cakewalk as administrator then you might have plugins that need reinstalling to put their licenses and presets under the correct user.

I could have waited until you experienced the problem to tell you. ?

Edited May 11, 2020 by Nigel Mackay

[winkpain]

5 minutes ago, Nigel Mackay said:

Nothing. Except if you fix the problem by not running Cakewalk as administrator then you might have plugins that need reinstalling to put their licenses and presets under the correct user.

I could have waited until you experienced the problem to tell you. ?

Interesting. The plot thickens!  I just sometimes want to save to a SD card  but don't mind saving to desktop, then dragging to SD if need be. I don't want to have to re-install plugins just to do so.

But! I'd like to at least understand what you bring up. So you're saying by choosing to run or not run CW as administrator would affect how the plugins work, depending on the plugins?  Does that depend on whether the plugins were installed with administrator rights or not?  And how then would the issue make itself known? Not until I attempted to use an affected plugin and it didn't work? There would be a error/warning message, or...?

I have always been thrown off by the permissions/administrator rights issues, never understanding why I, as the sole user and administrator of my computer, need to choose or sometimes not choose to "run as administrator".  I've read enough here and there around the edges of it to know it has evolved as Windows evolves, but I can't admit to really understanding how to behave with it. This is likely why I chose to set CW to "run as administrator", because to me it seems like the "better" choice.

This is obviously a bigger question than my original, which is really no big issue, but it is certainly a bigger curiosity on my part.

[Nigel Mackay]

Even if you are the only user of a PC, it is better to have a Standard User, because if you must go on the internet, it is better not to log on with administrator rights. If you are say in an office environment, then it is better that people are standard users, with only one administrator that can make changes and settings that could make the PCs unusable.

There are some folders in the Windows system that will only allow admin access for safety reasons (they assume an admin knows what they are doing.) But sometimes apps need access to those folders, and that is why they need to be run as administrator, or they ask for admin password to run. This is fine when you are the owner/user, because you know the password. Otherwise you need the administrator to come punch in his password to run/install those apps.

If you don't run Cakewalk as admin to can't accidentally do something bad for the PC. (There is just some old stuff that needs it.) So it is better not to. And some software licenses want internet access. So it is better not to be admin. You might want to watch a YouTube tutorial. So better not to be admin.

And where you get caught out, like me, is when you start off in the early days running it as admin. Then find out it is better not to. So you stop. Then you find that some of your VSTs no longer have presets. Because they were installed under admin\AppData, instead of youraccount\AppData.  Then you have to move the presets. And it can happen that licenses are in the registry, but only if you are admin. So uninstall and reinstall. ?

[winkpain]

17 minutes ago, Nigel Mackay said:

Even if you are the only user of a PC, it is better to have a Standard User, because if you must go on the internet, it is better not to log on with administrator rights. If you are say in an office environment, then it is better that people are standard users, with only one administrator that can make changes and settings that could make the PCs unusable.

There are some folders in the Windows system that will only allow admin access for safety reasons (they assume an admin knows what they are doing.) But sometimes apps need access to those folders, and that is why they need to be run as administrator, or they ask for admin password to run. This is fine when you are the owner/user, because you know the password. Otherwise you need the administrator to come punch in his password to run/install those apps.

If you don't run Cakewalk as admin to can't accidentally do something bad for the PC. (There is just some old stuff that needs it.) So it is better not to. And some software licenses want internet access. So it is better not to be admin. You might want to watch a YouTube tutorial. So better not to be admin.

And where you get caught out, like me, is when you start off in the early days running it as admin. Then find out it is better not to. So you stop. Then you find that some of your VSTs no longer have presets. Because they were installed under admin\AppData, instead of youraccount\AppData.  Then you have to move the presets. And it can happen that licenses are in the registry, but only if you are admin. So uninstall and reinstall. ?

Ok. This helps clarify a bit for my situation. Thanks!

SO, I am maybe in a similar situation to you, then, in that I have been running CW "as admin" from early on, and if I were now to follow this advice and uncheck that Properties option, I may run into these VST issues. The presets one is easy enough, right? I just move them to myaccount\AppData folder. BUT the license issue requiring the re-install would make itself known obviously? I would get a message saying the plugin is not registered when trying to use an instance of it? Or would I get messages for the affected ones when starting CW with a VST scan?

[winkpain]

...also, since I am the sole user with only one user account on my computer(s) and that account being an "Administrator" account (which is why I don't totally understand the need to "run as administrator" to begin with), wouldn't the presets be saved in my user account folder in either case, whether "Run as..." is chosen or not? I see no other user account AppData folder (except for the "Public" one) on my machine, with "Show hidden files and folders" checked off.  OR does this have something to do with the "hidden administrator account" that I read of?

Edited May 11, 2020 by winkpain

[Nigel Mackay]

Not sure in your case. Just try not using run as admin and see.

[slartabartfast]

The "administrator" accounts that you set up in Windows are actually accounts that are members of the "administrator group."  Members of that group can be granted ownership and permissions as a group, but they can also function as separate accounts with their own permissions. In any case they do not automatically get to do everything on the system. There is a true "administrator"--similar to the godlike account in early versions of the OS, but because it has so much unfettered access to the computer MS decided to make it difficult to access. It will show up if you inadvertently delete every account that is a member of the administrator group so that you can create a new member account of the administrators group. It can also be activated by the user with the caveat that when open, anyone can sign in with root access. Best advice: unless you have a very definite reason to do so--leave it hidden. You can almost always manage ownership/permissions issues without it. 

https://www.ghacks.net/2014/11/12/how-to-enable-the-hidden-windows-10-administrator-account/

The basic rule is that a program running in Windows gets the same privileges as the account that opened it. So when a program is running it is treated like a user as far as its ability to access resources. Different installers can sometimes put their resources in locations to which other programs do not have permissions, which might make them inaccessible to another program. Running programs or installers as administrator is a kludge to try to get around this issue that sometimes has unwanted consequences.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/identity-protection/access-control/access-control