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Windows 7 UAC Dilemma

As Windows 7 was receiving much positive feedback than expected from the beta testers, we had Long Zheng and Rafael, two Windows enthusiasts, come with a proof that malware can turn off UAC in Windows 7. Later Microsoft responded insisting that this is by design and actually not a bug. Later, again, we had Zheng and Rafael come out with a second flaw which showed Windows 7 UAC was still flawed. At this time, everybody thought Microsoft had done the right thing with Windows Vista UAC and compromised security over consumers' feedback in Windows 7.

UAC - A quick History

One of the highly criticized features in Windows Vista is the User Account Control(UAC) which prompts up a dialog box seeking users' permission to continue or stop whenever a system-level change is made. The problem with Vista is that even the default user account which is created during the install, who is a protected administrator (unlike in XP where the user is an Administrator), could not bypass the UAC until its tweaked. This created lots of criticism and the feature which was built to make Vista secure became the most hated feature amongst users. Of course, this was a drastic change for Microsoft and as well as end users who were very much inclined to a single user account (till Windows XP) who is an Administrator.

UAC in Windows 7

So, what has changed in Windows 7 in regard to UAC?

In Windows 7, User Account Control was created with the intention of putting you, the user, in control of your system and thus Microsoft came up with four different settings that a user can choose from:

* Always notify on every system change
* Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer
* Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer, without using the Secure Desktop
* Never notify