Vista UAC (User Account Control) on or off???

Vista UAC (User Account Control)....turn it off or leave it on?

  • Turn it off

    Votes: 104 51.0%

  • Leave it on

    Votes: 100 49.0%
  • Total voters
    204
If you're asking what I do, I say turn it off.

If you're asking what I think other people should do (a typical computer user), I say leave it on.
 
TechieSooner said:
Do you have an example of what window gives you 3 prompts????

Again- logging on as "admin" is a bad thing. That is EXACTLY why Microsoft put UAC there, because people still do it.
The Linux community has always understood this- very very few people log in as root on Linux, yet it's common on Windows. Only solution would be to make Administrator a limited account itself, hence UAC.
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I cannot think off hand, however, I understand what I'm doing. Allow my account not to have UAC or any limitations and all the other limited accounts I create can have these limitations. It's up to whoever runs the computer in the house to take care of the computer. My fiance has a limited account so she can't eff anything up.
 
In other words, bullshit. There is nothing - no single action you can possibly come up with - in Vista that requires 3 UAC prompts to appear one after another, period.

That's the kind of crap FUD-like talk that most of us that know better are simply sick to death of seeing. Yes, you will get a prompt for some actions (system level changes, installation of files into the Program Files directories, user account changes, etc), but NOTHING requires 1, 2, 3 prompts to continue one right after another.

That's just pure malarkey, plain and simple.

There really is no Admin account in Vista as it's been known to exist and function in all previous versions of Windows, it's just not there anymore. And even when you log into Vista as as Administrator, you still don't have that "root" god-like ability to do anything you want as in Linux/Unix, as vage so eloquently covered. Nice to see some people get it. ;)
 
vage said:
The actual admin account itself is disabled. Any account you create as an administrator account, has two tokens. One of a standard user, and one of an admin. For every purpose that it can, it will use the standard user token, when it can't it will prompt you with UAC to use the admin token.
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Yes, I know all that ;)
However each account is still a member of Administrators which was my point... Only difference between an account in Administrators and then a Limited Account is one you don't have to enter a password- but you still have to allow it.

vage said:
Personally I leave UAC on so that other users that I create still get the UAC prompts, and then I just made it elevate without prompting for my admin account through secpol.msc
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I guess you're going to have to elaborate... If you're talking auto-elevate what the heck good security is that??? You're back to XP.

l3ender said:
If you're asking what I do, I say turn it off.

If you're asking what I think other people should do (a typical computer user), I say leave it on.
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And you're less susceptible to zero-day attacks because.............

Joe Average said:
In other words, bullshit. There is nothing - no single action you can possibly come up with - in Vista that requires 3 UAC prompts to appear one after another, period.
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Thank you, I was going to say the same thing :D

That's preciously why I asked for an example BEFORE confronting him on it... I know he was full of BS but I was going to let himself prove it first ;)
 
We care about people being factual about the facts, you could say, and not impressed when someone shoots off their mouth about Vista just to be saying something. If you're gonna have a discussion, be accurate and forthcoming about what you (meaning anyone reading this that chooses to participate) have to say and your experiences.

When someone says "UAC pops up CONSTANTLY" it's obvious they're full of shit and just typing to be typing. Anyone that uses Vista for 10 mins knows UAC doesn't constantly pop up, that's just silly and totally inaccurate. There's a reason for it popping up, and while it might seem like it's constant, it's far from it.

More people complain about Vista because of UAC than most any other reason, so it gets old fast, especially when their complaints are typically unfounded and just full of bullshit whining, and that's not a good reason either.

Here's what I want to hear from people when discussing UAC:

"I don't have it on because I don't want it on." <<<--- This gets to the point instantly, it makes it clear that the person isn't going to waste a lot of time debating the who, what, when, where, or why about UAC, it doesn't get into silly FUD-like concepts or misconceptions, it just gets the job done and makes it concrete and clear.

The attempted rationalizations of "I know what I'm doing" are meaningless as most of us do know what we're doing, but that still flies in the face of Vista's #1 priority:

Protect itself from the user or errant applications that might try to bring it down and continue functioning.

People just don't get that aspect of Vista and almost approach it from the "God dammit it's my OS and it won't do what I want it to do" which is of course entirely wrong. It will do what you ask of it, but there's a different way to accomplish your goals now.

I hesitate to say "Respect Vista and Vista will respect you" because people will think I'm giving the OS some almost AI-like qualities. And they'd be accurate to some degree because it does self-healing as required, as long as you (the user reading this) doesn't disable its ability to function that way by design.

Yes, you can disable almost every single aspect of Vista's self-healing and self-tuning aspects, unlike in Linux (unless you're running as root directly, bad idea) and unlike OSX entirely, but in doing so you basically screw yourself over if and when something goes wrong - only now you can't blame Vista or Microsoft or anyone else for the problems. The blame lies squarely on you, the user, for mucking up the OS in the first place.

Simple.
 
Joe Average said:
When someone says "UAC pops up CONSTANTLY" it's obvious they're full of shit and just typing to be typing. Anyone that uses Vista for 10 mins knows UAC doesn't constantly pop up, that's just silly and totally inaccurate. There's a reason for it popping up, and while it might seem like it's constant, it's far from it.

More people complain about Vista because of UAC than most any other reason, so it gets old fast, especially when their complaints are typically unfounded and just full of bullshit whining, and that's not a good reason either.
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I have to visit the washroom CONSTANTLY when I go out drinking. The English language is meant to be interpreted, not taken literally.

For the record I have UAC enabled. I really didn't find it that annoying.

When someone says they are annoyed by it and that they do find it obtrusive, it's ridiculous for someone else to come and tell them that they're wrong, because clearly they do feel that way. You might call it "bullshit whining", but it's a legitimate opinion nonetheless.

Also I still find it amusing that anyone can get this worked about computer software. With the exception of an incident on the Video Card forum where someone was saying some factually incorrect stuff about a product I had worked on, I really couldn't care less what other people are saying. I'm quite content having my own opinion and letting other people have theirs (correct or otherwise).
 
TechieSooner said:
I guess you're going to have to elaborate... If you're talking auto-elevate what the heck good security is that??? You're back to XP.
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While I don't condone using it, if you're going to have automatic elevation it is at least a little better than XP, since most programs will be running with limited privileges and that makes using them as attack vectors more difficult. Of course, malware need only be dropped on the system and run as a separate process, which will be automatically elevated, so there are obvious flaws to this.
 
jimmyb said:
I don't understand your question. Can you rephrase it?
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This:

jimmyb said:
I really couldn't care less what other people are saying. I'm quite content having my own opinion and letting other people have theirs (correct or otherwise).
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Yet you felt compelled to some degree to click that Reply button and post your own opinion, right? That's what my question was prompted by... and no, it wasn't a UAC prompt either. ;)
 
jimmyb said:
I have to visit the washroom CONSTANTLY when I go out drinking. The English language is meant to be interpreted, not taken literally.
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Since when? Maybe I dont read enough things other than Engineering books, instruction books and rulebooks (I used to collect miniatures), but I've always taken the english language literally before trying to interpret it (ie. assume literal speaking before assuming I need to interpret it). :p
 
I was going to tell him there's medication that could help with those all too frequent restroom breaks but but but... :D
 
Joe Average said:
Yet you felt compelled to some degree to click that Reply button and post your own opinion, right? That's what my question was prompted by... and no, it wasn't a UAC prompt either. ;)
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Oh I see.

I suppose I should have been more clear: I couldn't care less what other people's opinions are about software, hardware, other things, etc.

I do care about people objecting to someone else's opinion as if it were wrong. (You might call them meta-opinions). I find it somewhat arrogant since opinions aren't statements of fact, only preference.
 
Tudz said:
Since when? Maybe I dont read enough things other than Engineering books, instruction books and rulebooks (I used to collect miniatures), but I've always taken the english language literally before trying to interpret it (ie. assume literal speaking before assuming I need to interpret it). :p
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Since forever. You'd be surprised how much of the English language is non-literal. Most rhetorical devices are interpretive.

Even statements like "I have to go to bathroom" contain elements meant to be interpreted. We take that statement to mean "I really want to go to the bathroom", or we presume there to be an implicit qualifier on the statement like "or else I will piss myself". (yes more washroom stuff :) )

I don't find that stance all that shocking coming from an engineer. Often they have a comparatively harder time integrating themselves into society because they do tend to only take literal interpretations of things. And I'm an engineer myself... often I've misinterpreted people for this reason.

Wow this is OT.
 
Sounded like a diatribe from a professor of Linguistics I know. Lucky for me it's a study of mine, has been for decades. ;)

I get it, really. And the admission of being an Engineer? Priceless... ;)

</off_topic>
 
jimmyb said:
Since forever. You'd be surprised how much of the English language is non-literal. Most rhetorical devices are interpretive.

Even statements like "I have to go to bathroom" contain elements meant to be interpreted. We take that statement to mean "I really want to go to the bathroom", or we presume there to be an implicit qualifier on the statement like "or else I will piss myself". (yes more washroom stuff :) )

I don't find that stance all that shocking coming from an engineer. Often they have a comparatively harder time integrating themselves into society because they do tend to only take literal interpretations of things. And I'm an engineer myself... often I've misinterpreted people for this reason.

Wow this is OT.
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I always thought that was just an incorrect use of the English language more so than it being that the English language was intended to be interpretted. Like when people ask "can I go to the bathroom?" opposed to "may I go to the bathroom?". I've always just considered it as either incorrect use of the language, exaggeration or sarcasm if someone says something which was not meant to be taken literally. Or alterntavely something of a more cultural or evolved thing, like saying "I could eat a horse", you aren't saying it literally, and people will know what you mean, but I never considered it how English was intended to be used. :p

But I wont seek to argue, my knowledge of English is below par given that its my first and only language. :p
 
jimmyb said:
When someone says they are annoyed by it and that they do find it obtrusive, it's ridiculous for someone else to come and tell them that they're wrong, because clearly they do feel that way.
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I agree 100%.
Except, most people take it a step further and come up with ridiculous claims like it prompts you 3 times to open a single window, or it prompts you at startup, shutdown, logon, logoff, etc (There was actually one moron on here that was claiming that...)

Mithent said:
if you're going to have automatic elevation it is at least a little better than XP, since most programs will be running with limited privileges and that makes using them as attack vectors more difficult.
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Can you explain how?
If it requests full access to something- it gets automatically granted. You might as well disable UAC all together.
 
TechieSooner said:
And you're less susceptible to zero-day attacks because.............
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Did I say I was? No. I simply said that if it's me, I turn it off. I didn't say I'm against it, I just don't want it activated for my personal use.

Seriously, some of you are way too picky about this. This is (supposed to be) a forum of computer tweakers and customization. People can do what they want with their own computer, believe it or not. I too am against the fact that some people don't know or profess the truth about something like UAC, but when I get "called out" on my own choice regarding something like this, it's a little far.
 
Off. I do nothing on that particular computer but browse and use office so there's no sensitive information to be had if anything happened.
 
flip3d said:
Off. I do nothing on that particular computer but browse and use office so there's no sensitive information to be had if anything happened.
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..But... if you just browse and use Office, that won't generate UAC prompts anyways......
 
I have always had it on, but it isbeginning to annoy. They really need to update it with an "always allow" list option.
 
Monkey34 said:
I have always had it on, but it isbeginning to annoy. They really need to update it with an "always allow" list option.
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The problem with this, is what happens when the item that's always allowed is compromised? Then suddenly you have malware using that item's whitelist.

The thing about using keys and such is they can ALWAYS be broken. UAC has yet to be broken, and by design, it really can't be. If it's a system change- UAC blocks it. Period. You deviate from that- and it starts creating holes.
 
Is there a way to allow certain programs to bypass UAC(like Rivatuner and CPU-Z)?
 
Riftsaw said:
Is there a way to allow certain programs to bypass UAC(like Rivatuner and CPU-Z)?
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Yes, you can create a task in the Task Scheduler utility and tell set it to "run with highest Privileges. You can set it up to run at startup or create a shortcut to the task that runs this command:

schtasks.exe /run /tn "task name"

It will allow you to run that program without a UAC prompt.
 
griffinhart said:
Yes, you can create a task in the Task Scheduler utility and tell set it to "run with highest Privileges. You can set it up to run at startup or create a shortcut to the task that runs this command:

schtasks.exe /run /tn "task name"

It will allow you to run that program without a UAC prompt.
Click to expand...

My procrastination sense is tingling...

Yeah, I'll do a sweep of all the programs I need to setup like this later.
 
TechieSooner said:
I guess you're going to have to elaborate... If you're talking auto-elevate what the heck good security is that??? You're back to XP.
Click to expand...

It is basically the same thing as back to XP. I leave it on, so that for other users on my machine, people like my gf or friends, still have the benefit of UAC enabled and they can't screw as much up because they are standard users. Myself, however, I know what I am doing and can live without the prompts, so I make it automatically elevate because I am in the Administrators group.
 
vage said:
I know what I am doing
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I should really stop getting so frustrated at that attitude towards UAC.. see my post on page 2. It's really not about protecting untrustworthy users from themselves; Windows already had limited accounts before UAC. The difference is that administrators can now have most of the security of a limited account without the inconvenience. Do you trust that none of your programs have security flaws that might be exploited?
 
Catweazle said:
Or just don't use second rate software which generates unnecessary UAC prompts!
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That's my first solution.
100% of the applications out there TODAY, that I have personally seen, are all second-rate software, mom and pop software, whatever...

vage said:
It is basically the same thing as back to XP. I leave it on, so that for other users on my machine, people like my gf or friends, still have the benefit of UAC enabled and they can't screw as much up because they are standard users. Myself, however, I know what I am doing and can live without the prompts, so I make it automatically elevate because I am in the Administrators group.
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I see, makes sense. I still don't agree with disabling it though.

Mithent said:
Do you trust that none of your programs have security flaws that might be exploited?
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And this right here is why I don't agree with disabling UAC... 100% QFT.

UAC IS NOT hand-holding software that so many people seem to think it is.
 
I turned it off and never back on. Even that one click is annoying to me when it pops up. Simply a personal choice.
 
Excuse me, d3c1us, but I'm a 'UAC advocate' ands such statements don't put me into a "fury". I actually couldn't care less what others do, and when I see such statements I merely smile and think "what a goose!" And my opinion means (or should) probably about as much to the other person as theirs does to me :D
 
I have argued that other side of this in the past, but at this point, I leave it on. It's not that bad once you get used to it, and it has the potential to stop a lot of bad things from happening. It can be annoying sometimes, but it is reported to stop most rootkits from ever happening.
 
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