Battleangel

Ok, this is what happened when I booted up this morning and tried running AutoCAD - I got a an extensive FATAL ERROR message stating that “All of the possible directories for storing temporary files either do not exist or are readonly. Please correct this situation before running AutoCAD again”. Does anyone think I was able to? No, after like six hours I am still getting nowhere.

Autodesk suggests doing this. What a joke. Maybe they should have had a chat with Bill before they brushed off the problem that easily. This is the deal as far as I understand it: AutoCAD checks for read-only folders. In XP every folder is read-only because they are customized and the OS uses the read-only (which btw isn’t really read-only, it just looks that way).
The registry hack didn’t work (it was supposed to set system attrib instead of read-only) nor did the disabling of simple file sharing. It kind of pisses me off that the admin of the system can’t change the attrib of a single folder. As for the customization I do not know? Why did the problem occur over a week after first installing the software? Can customized folders be separated from the OS? Is it possible to address in a SP?

There is a informative usenet thread about this problem that can be accessed through google news. Yeah .. it’s not a bug .. it’s a feature. Thanks for letting us know. It feels a whole lot better already.

There is really nothing I can do about it now. I am preparing to setup a dual boot with WinME just so that I can finish the damn drawing.
And I don’t know if MS is to blame for this either. I have never encountered this problem before and it is pretty obvious that Autodesk chose a cumbersome way to ensure that their product could run without interference.

Edit 2003-07-26: Ok. So I see other ppl are having this problem as well. Sorry guys. Never fixed it. I dual booted and completed the project. Still bothers me to this day. I dug up a couple of more links that might get you somewhere but from what I gather the problem still persists. It is by design.

MR&D Reader Forum: Strange “Read Only” glitch with XP

MS Knowledge Base article 326549

Re-installing the whole shebang (not just AutoCad) might solve things. But that has to be the stupidest tech support answer ever. Of course there is a new version (2004) of AutoCad out as well. I doubt that it behaves any differently but it might be worth a try.