Hello Lynn,

A quick way to fix this problem is to right-click on the bbw.exe file in your Band-in-a-Box folder, select Properties and choose 'run as administrator'. The other way (as others have suggested) is to turn UAC off, although some people don't like to do that.

I think the best way though, is to move the bb folder somewhere else ... C:\My Programs\bb, for example.

In our testing, Band-in-a-Box runs fine when installed to the Program Files directory in Windows Vista or 7, whether or not UAC is turned on and whether logged on as an administrator or standard user. However, the Program Files directory in Vista/7 does play tricks on you, so I can see that the potential for complications does exist.

The trick is that when you don't have administrator privileges, you cannot write to Program Files. So files that the application creates/modifies in Program Files do not actually get saved there, they get redirected to a virtual location. You might find your saved files in a directory like this: \User\<accountname>\appdata\localsettings\virtualstore\programfiles (you would need to be showing hidden folders in Explorer to see it). If you have administrator privileges the file redirection doesn't take place, which creates further complications in itself.

So theoretically everything should work fine, but simple tasks can become complicated when virtual folders are involved - especially with a program like Band-in-a-Box that has thousands of files, many of which are potentially user editable. (For example, consider what happens when you open the \bb\styles00 demo subfolder (using the SongPicker to save the songlist data for that folder), then open the song African.mgu, change a couple of chords and re-save the file)

Andrew
PG Music Inc.