Internet profiles for IE7

[Joshe]

I recently started using Internet Explorer 7 on my Windows Vista and so not much aware of it. I just wanted to know that is there specific locations in the user profile of IE7 that an extension in Protected Mode Internet Explorer can not write to? Please help.

[Techno01]

Yes, Internet Explorer-specific locations in the following USER PROFILE folders.

Documents and Settings\%USER PROFILE%...
...\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
...\Local Settings\Temp
...\Local Settings\History ...\%USER PROFILE%\Favorites ...\%USER PROFILE%\Cookies

Extensions can write to the following locations.

Documents and Settings\%USER PROFILE%...
...\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Low
...\Local Settings\Temp\Low
...\Local Settings\History\Low ...\%USER PROFILE%\Favorites\Low ...\%USER PROFILE%\Cookies\Low %USER PROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow

Remember that that extensions can not write to system locations such as the Program Files folder or the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE subtrees.

[Dodger]

Some extensions need to save files to a particular location so that users or applications can later find the file. The following steps show how to save a file outside of a low integrity location.

• Create a temporary version of the file in %userprofile%\AppData\LocalLow. Don't forget to delete the temporary file after the file is sucessfully saved.
  
  
• Call IEShowSaveFileDialog with the location of the user's profile folder to prompt the user to save the file in a different location. If the user accepts the Save As dialog, IEShowSaveFileDialog returns the destination folder they have chosen.
  
  
• Call IESaveFile with the location of the temporary file saved in Step 1.

When you do this, Protected Mode's user broker copies the file from the temporary location to the location selected by the user.

[Steve123]

In Windows Vista, Internet Explorer 7 runs in Protected Mode, which helps protect users from attack by running the Internet Explorer process with greatly restricted privileges. Protected Mode significantly reduces the ability of an attack to write, alter or destroy data on the user's machine or to install malicious code.Protected Mode builds on the new integrity mechanism to restrict write access to securable objects like processes, files, and registry keys with higher integrity levels. When run in Protected Mode, Internet Explorer is a low integrity process; it cannot gain write access to files and registry keys in a user's profile or system locations.