[RESOLVED] Protected computers & AppData folder

[Davor Geci]

Hello,
if I have an exe file that doesn't need any installations and people that are on computers that are protected from installations of any software use it and I need to store some data somewhere on that machine, can I do it in the AppData folder?
Or how would you do it, where to create an txt file?
Thanks,
Davor

[dilettante]

For text files I'd probably let the user decide. Give them a Save As dialog.

[Davor Geci]

Thanks dilettante for your quick reply.
I have simplified my problem too much.

I have a simple exe created in vb6 that communicate with a php script on my webpage and filters a mysql database for a key.
I want to convert this exe file to Base64 string and include it in a VBA class in an Excel workbook.
Then when a user opens this Excel workbook, in the initialization of this VBA class I would like to recreate this exe (convert this Base64 string back to this exe) in a folder on this computer, I was thinking in AppData folder.
So that now I could start this exe with a command arguments and it will call my php file on my page to get the keys from mysql database.

I wanted to use this exe between Excel workbook and my database so that I can first see if the user is having a valid subscription. Because as you know in VBA all the code is visible, so I wanted to use a vb6 app that doesn't require installations and the code is not visible to users.

Will I be able to access this AppData folder (or any other folder) on this protected computers, where I can recreate my exe from this Base64 string?

[wqweto]

You can use Environ$("TMP") as a simple way to discover a writable folder on *any* protected or not desktop.

You can temporary store (and execute) any kind of files there, provided that it's not flagged as malware by Windows Defender.

cheers,
</wqw>

[Davor Geci]

Thanks guys,
I will try with TMP.
Davor

[Schmidt]

I will try with TMP.

In the Colibrico-App (an SVG-based Icon-Designer), I've solved this "Online-Licensing-check-thingy",
by using an "encrypted String of VBScript-code" (included in a resource of the executable)...

And all without having to place this Code-String in the FileSystem first... -
instead it got (after decrypting it) - directly added to a (short-living) ScriptControl-instance.
(FYI, the CreateObject("WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1")-call works in VBScript as well).

Olaf

[westconn1]

some users do purge their tmp folders from time to time
a "your" folder in appdata may be preferable, unless you do not care about permanency
i am sure appdata is just for the purpose of application data files, else you could also use program data

[Davor Geci]

I'm also using a temporary txt file for storing the results that I get from the server, so that I don't bombard my server with query's. Once per day I query the server and store the results in txt. I will first try with AppData, and see how it goes. And in the meantime Olaf idea is also interesting.
By the way, so that you know what I'm doing. I'm creating an Agent that will send the telemetry data to Azure Application Insights from VBA projects (Excel, Access, ....). I have already something similar (vba telemetry). But the main problem was that it needed a setup to be run on every machine where we wanted to collect the telemetry data. So it was not unusable in most cases.