Repeated local.dat Access Denied Errors

[TheAncient]

For your information only - no action required
(I asked Copilot to summarize the investigations related to this topic in the form of a ticket)


Patch My PC Home Updater v5.4.5.0 Repeated local.dat Access Denied Errors
Resolved by Complete Application State Reset
Product:
Patch My PC Home Updater v5.4.5.0
Issue Description:
Multiple systems were reporting the following errors during application startup and catalog refresh operations:
Plain Text
Scheduled task has been invalidated
Plain Text
Failed to write bytes due to an error:
Access to the path 'C:\ProgramData\PatchMyPC\local.dat' is denied.
The application otherwise continued to function normally.
Affected Systems:
•   XXXX1 (Windows 11)
•   XXXX2 (Windows 10)
•   XXXX3 (Windows 11)
•   XXXX4 (Windows 11)
•   XXXX5 (Windows 11)
Investigation Performed:
•   Verified local.dat existed.
•   Verified NTFS permissions were correct.
•   Verified ownership and inheritance were correct.
•   Verified file was not read-only.
•   Successfully wrote to local.dat manually from an elevated command prompt.
•   Confirmed scheduled tasks existed and pointed to the correct executable.
•   Observed two ProgramData folders:
Plain Text
C:\ProgramData\Patch My PC
C:\ProgramData\PatchMyPC
Root Cause (Suspected):
Corrupted or stale Patch My PC configuration/state, including one or more of:
•   ProgramData contents
•   local.dat
•   Scheduled task configuration
Issue does not appear to be caused by Windows file permissions.
Resolution:
1.   Delete all Patch My PC scheduled tasks:
o   Patch My PC Home Updater - Check Apps
o   Patch My PC Home Updater - Update Apps
o   Patch My PC Home Updater - Self Updater
2.   Uninstall Patch My PC Home Updater.

3.   Delete the following folders:
C:\ProgramData\Patch My PC
C:\ProgramData\PatchMyPC
4.   Reboot the system.
5.   Reinstall the latest Patch My PC Home Updater.
6.   Launch the application and allow it to recreate its scheduled tasks.
Result:
•   Error no longer occurs.
•   Scheduled tasks recreated successfully.
•   local.dat recreated correctly.
•   Clean application logs observed after reinstall.
•   Resolution validated on five separate systems (Windows 10 and Windows 11).
Status:
✅ Resolved
✅ Reproduced and corrected on 5/5 affected systems
✅ Incident Closed