Fix for Windows Users not being able to open/save on network drives

[pixelform]

Came across this fix quite by accident this morning as I was tired from having to save to a cloud drive versus a network drive.

I own all three Affinity programs. But, for some reason, I kept getting license error not found every time I open Publisher. The fix for that problem is to run Publisher with elevated privileges, (Run as Administrator). But that broke the functionality of being able to open and save to network drives. Only internal and external drives including cloud drives that have a drive letter work in this case.

So, the fix for Windows users is to edit Registry. I found this fix here: https://winaero.com/enable-the-access-to-network-drives-from-elevated-apps-running-as-administrator/

Instructions as noted in the link above:

Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista come with a special Group Policy option which unlocks network drives for admin accounts:

1. Open Registry Editor.
2. Go to the following Registry key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
3. Create a new DWORD value called EnableLinkedConnections, and set it to 1.
4. Restart your PC and you are done.

Since this fix is OS dependent, it should work for any Publisher version and other apps as well. Works with both 1.9.1 and 1.9.2 no issues.

[Patrick Connor]

@pixelform

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums  

Thanks for sharing the solution that worked for you. Your problem is not a problem that we have come across. I have asked the Tech Support team, and this is not an issue that they remember coming up before, so not sure why you were affected. or really the full implications of your work around. We would always suggest extra care and when changing any registry settings manually.

[Leigh]

If you could provide more info or a screenshot of the issue you were getting, that would be great.