Cannot open temp file Access Denied

Question

I am using Windows 7 64 bit. In the last few weeks I have had problems opening some files downloaded from the internet. These are standard files from well-known reputable sources. The latest is Firefox setup 28.0.exe . (I thought my browser Chrome might be causing the trouble)

Others are fdminst.exe, Virtualbox-43.4-91207win.exe and Avast-browser-cleanup.exe. 

I click and get the usual message Run or Save. I click Run and get the error message ""Cannot open File C:\stuart\appdata\local\temp\filename .tmp". Sometimes the message has The name 7Zip as the title. I never use 7Zip and don't have it installed. The error messages vary slightly - even for two attempts at the same file! But are always about the same sometimes with Access Denied.

There are no other users.

Have I got a virus? I use AVG and also periodically Malwarebytes Anti-Malware but they have found nothing.

Finally I have downloaded some other files and have opened them with no difficultyy.

Can anyone help ?

Answer 1

Being that the usual "temp" directory is different for each user, a possible work-around would be for you to create another user on your computer that has Administrator privilege.  Then logoff your normal user account and log into your computer as this new user and try to do some of your installs while logged in as the new administrator user.  This *should* use a brand-new clean "temp" directory to do the installation.  Hopefully this will work.

Something else:  On my computer, there is a "C:\Windows\Temp" directory.  It is possible that this is the directory that it is trying to use instead of the usual user-profile temp directory.  If you have this folder, you might want to right-click on it -> Properties -> Security (tab) and verify that "Administrators" have full access to this directory.

HTH,

  JW

Answer 2

Some installer programs make use of a "temporary" directory to extract compressed content before installing or otherwise executing on your computer.  It appears that for some reason, you do not have permission to write in this temporary directory.  Try the following:

  Click "Start" and in the "Search" window area type the following:

     %temp%..

(ends in a back-slash and two periods) and press "Enter".  This should bring up an Explorer window with the path to your "Local" directory "C:\stuart\appdata\local".  Right-click on the "temp" folder that you see there and select "Properties" from the pop-up window.  When that window pops up, click on the "Security" tab at the top.  When that window opens, make sure that your username appears in the "Group or user names" window and click once on it to select it.  Make sure that the "Full Control" entry in the lower "Permissions" window is checked indicating that you have full control of this folder.  If this is not the case, click the "Edit" or "Advanced" button and give yourself full permissions to this folder

HTH,

  JW