Disclaimer: I have no idea if this is relevant for Mac, since I use Windows. Furthermore, I use Windows 10, and I have no idea if this fix is identical for other versions of Windows, such as 11, 7, Vista, XP, etc.
I recently noticed that when I was trying to move files and delete files from my Replays folder, that I didn’t have permission to do so, despite being logged in as an administrator on my computer. I also noticed that there were a bunch of files with the writeCacheBackup extension that existed, which to my knowledge was the result of the game not being able to delete such files after having created them, which is consistent with my attempts to move and delete files.
I did some digging, and it seems that the recent StarCraft II update has changed the permissions on the folder in Documents/StarCraft II, causing a whole host of issues not limited to the problems I was having. In order to rectify the problem, I had to change the access rights of the folder (and, by inheritance, its subfolders) to match the access rights of the other folders in Documents.
My Fix:
Locate the Documents\StarCraft II folder.
Right click on the folder, and click Properties.
In the Security tab, click Edit…
Click Add…
Click Advanced…
Ensure that the Users object type is selected from the Location that is your local PC.
Click Find Now.
Select your user profile from the list that appears, and click OK, click OK, click Apply and click OK.
Click Advanced, select your user profile and click Edit.
Ensure that Type is Allow and Applies to is This folder, subfolder and files.
Tick Full control in order to give your user profile proper access rights, then click OK.
Click Apply and then click OK, then click OK.
The access rights of the folder should now be changed for your user profile, giving you complete control over the folder.
Working for me. Just one remark. After I close my SCII they starting “update”, breaking access back. So you need to do this every time before start to actually play the game
Followed each step to delete some “writeCacheBackup” files that had appeared in the Replays folder, it worked.
I launched the game and played one Coop match then quit to recheck the folder, not a new “writeCacheBackup” file and SCII permissions didn’t seem to change, but I didn’t test further than that.
Will see tomorrow if it reverts to the broken update.
I’m dealing with the same issue with an “update” happening every time I close it and resetting the permissions, don’t suppose you’ve found a fix for that?
Also, I tried making a new Local Account to test the permissions for it when I play and it actually locks the new Local Account into having Full Access so you don’t need to manually set it every time. If there is no fix for the permissions then at least that would make it less annoying.
So I launched the game with permissions still good, played Coop, no change or update after exiting the game.
Tried Campaign to see if it would be different, started by loading an old save before “Gates of Hell”, completed the mission without issues. Went to launch a new WoL campaign , again all well for the first mission and cutscenes. Closed the game, no sign of update, rechecked the SCII folder, permissions did not reset.
To clarify, my home folder is actually on a network drive hosted on a Synology NAS and synced using Windows’ offline folder synchronization because I configured folder redirection.
I had this problem (error BLZBNTAGT0000084B) and I didn’t have access to users permissions modifying, I had to change the ‘owner’ of the folder in Advanced tab, change it to you / current Windows user, and it solved the problem for me.
I just want to say thank you, a few weeks ago I suddenly started having issue with HOTS unable to play becuase it said there was an updated needed and it kept throwing [Error code: BLZBNTAGT0000084B]
I screwed with ownership and permission of all kinds of files, multiple hard drives, eventually I created a new windows user account and that allowed me to play for a few days but then it happened again. I was convinced i just had gone too long without formatting (it’s been -years-) and things have gotten too jumbled in my system files because I’ve experienced a couple other weird issues recently, was about to bite the bullet and format when I came across this post.
This solved my heroes of the storm issue, thanks bud
Found out that the folder loses ACL inheritance and then defaults to some default, restrictive, permissions.
Since it looks like this is not going to be officially fixed soon-ish, I patched together a short PowerShell script so I don’t have to fix it manually every time.
Put the following 4 lines of code into a file “User_Home\Documents\fix_starcraft.ps1”. Since it needs Windows PowerShell to run, you also need to sign the script with a self-signed code signing certificate, otherwise, you get an error.
(All single and double quotes need to be straight!)