If Start-Transcript is ran without -Append and a user has write privileges on the file without write privileges on the parent folder, the file will be silently deleted without any kind of error message.

Steps to reproduce

As administrator create a folder and file with the privileges specified above. I'm assuming that a local user, "myuser" exist:

mkdir "c:\test\"
icacls.exe "c:\test" "/grant" "builtin\administrators:(CI)(OI)(F)" "/inheritance:r"
icacls.exe "c:\test" "/grant" "myuser:(CI)(OI)(RX)"
"" | Out-File -Encoding "ascii" -LiteralPath "c:\test\my-transcript.txt"
icacls.exe "c:\test\my-transcript.txt" "/grant:r" "myuser:(F)"

Run Start-Transcript as "myuser":

Start-Transcript -LiteralPath "c:\test\my-transcript.txt"
Stop-Transcript

Expected behavior

The transcript should be written to c:\test\my-transcript.txt

Actual behavior

The output states success, but the file is actually deleted.

PS C:> Start-Transcript -LiteralPath "c:\test\my-transcript.txt"
Transcript started, output file is c:\test\my-transcript.txt

PS C:> Stop-Transcript
Transcript stopped, output file is C:\test\my-transcript.txt

PS C:> Test-Path "c:\test\my-transcript.txt"
False

Environment data

Not the newest PowerShell ...

PS C:> $PSVersionTable

Name Value

---

PSVersion 5.1.14393.1358
PSEdition Desktop
PSCompatibleVersions {1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0...}
BuildVersion 10.0.14393.1358
CLRVersion 4.0.30319.42000
WSManStackVersion 3.0
PSRemotingProtocolVersion 2.3
SerializationVersion 1.1.0.1

... but you can clearly see the error in line 230 of StartTranscriptCmdlet.cs :

// If they didn't specify -Append, delete the file
if (!_shouldAppend)
{
	System.IO.File.Delete(effectiveFilePath);
}

This part of the code should rather write some sort of zero length content to the file.