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Cold T
Asked: 2014-08-23 00:40:52 +0800 CST

Is it a best practice to install programs to Program Files?

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We have an application that is being provided and installed by a third party company. They are charging market rate 'consultancy' fee to do this.

They installed the majority of the folders in the root of the C drive, to my shock.

Is it OK to install them to the root of the C drive? Can this method of installation cause problems? Or should applications be installed to Program Files instead?

windows

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    While not an official source, Raymond Chen at The Old New Thing has discussed this.

    Specifically, the above-linked blog post states:

    Some of Microsoft's software certification programs (such as the Windows Logo) require that applications set their default installation location to the Program Files directory.
    /.../
    Program Files was introduced in an attempt to bring order to chaos. Think of it as painting lines in a parking garage.

    Naturally, compliance with those software certification programs' terms would only apply if you intended to apply for (or already have applied, and received certification under) those particular software certification programs. And more to the point in this case, it's about the default installation path, nothing more.

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  2. There are certain advantages to not installing in %programfiles%. One is to safeguard the program from being used as a trampoline for malware (for more details see, for example http://foundstone-dire-detect-insecurely-regist.software.informer.com/1.0/ or google for more "Foundstone DIRE").

    Another advantage would be to install w/o requiring elevated privileges. This may be important, again, if a program is compromised, it won't have the access rights to compromise something else.

    In Linux world, it is common practice to install third-party and system's software packages separately. For instance, while usual software packages go into /usr/bin, third-party typically goes into /usr/local/bin or /usr/share/bin if it needs to be shared by multiple users, or into $HOME/bin if it is supposed to be used by this specific user. Hearing how it's a consultancy firm that installs these programs on your PC, they probably have some (not to say contrived) user policies which make it necessary or at least more convenient to not use %programfiles%.

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