It sounds like you are "side loading" sneakerware onto users' PCs in a managed network though hackish means rather than by running a proper application installer. I'm surprised that anti-virus software isn't triggering on your "dropper" program that self-extracts software onto target machines though.
There are two modes of operation for installers: per-user and per-machine.
A per-machine install to let everyone run the application requires elevation. The users need an admininstrator user/pw they can log on as, or an admin must "push install" it to such machines, or else an admin must provide "over the shoulder" credentials to the UAC prompt when running the install.
A per-user install only lets one user install an application and only that user can run it. There are no conventions for data sharing among users except "owner" style publishing which doesn't result in files fully read/write for anyone logging onto the machine.
Elevated per-machine installs are meant to create an application data folder under [tt]FOLDERID_LocalAppData[/tt] and set the required permissions on it for any shared, per-machine data like global settings files and common application data files. But a non-elevated per-user install cannot do this.
A possible alternative might be to use: [tt]FOLDERID_Public[/tt] which in the degenerate case of an English-language installation of Windows has the default path mapping [tt](%SystemDrive%\Users\Public[/tt] though this special folder does not exist prior to Vista and may actually be somewhere else or named something else on any given target system.
However this doesn't get around the need to install your application on a per-machine basis so anyone logging on can run it.