The fix might actually require a User folder sooner than later. It seems Vista prevents a program from writing a file in the Program Files folder with only a Standard type of User Account.
Yes. In fact, I believe that the expected behavior would be (regardless of whether it's a standard or administrator account) for UAC to pop up a dialog box requesting permission to write the file. Depending upon the type of account, as well as the actual operation, there might be either one or two dialog boxes, and (if it's a standard account), an administrator's username and password would be required.
(That's required for making any changes in "system folders" like \Program Files\)
In any case, the account I was using was an administrator account - not a "standard" user account.
And I didn't see any UAC prompts or dialog boxes, other than the one I quoted.