Replace Windows Vista UAC with Smart UAC Replacement
In past we had review Norton UAC tool an alternative for default Windows Vista user access control. Now here is yet another similar Vista UAC replacement tool Smart UAC Replacement which is easier, more comfortable and definitely less irritating than the standard Windows UAC.
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27.9.2009 Windows Vista Activation Problems
Windows Vista has had everything but an easy ride since it hit the shelves in January 2007. The operating system was plagued by a luxuriant variety of problems from hardware and software incompatibilities to lack of support and poor performance and reliability.
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23.11.2007 Windows Vista Interface Causes Problems For Consumers
Windows Vista Interface Causes Problems For Consumers, Support Firm Says. Navigating Windows Vista's Aero user interface is a big problem for many consumers learning Microsoft's 6-month-old operating system, a technical support company said Thursday. Thanks to pacpis for this news.
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13.7.2007 Five Vista perception problems Windows 7 must overcome
Wide Angle Zoom You can just feel Apple getting ready with a new slate of "I'm a Mac" ads featuring Windows 7. They'll have to roll off Microsoft like Teflon.
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29.5.2009 Windows Vista: Betas show potential and problems
Windows Vista shows a lot of promise. With beta 2 of Microsoft's much anticipated operating system nearly ready to be released to the public, users will soon have the ability to judge for themselves how Microsoft's next generation operating system is coming along.
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19.5.2006 Windows 7 UAC, the Evolution
One of the aspects of Windows Vista that is going to evolve in Windows 7 is the User Account Control.
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9.10.2008 Windows 7 UAC has a second flaw
Long Zheng of I Started Something has uncovered a flaw in Windows 7's UAC that means malware can elevate itself to administrator privileges.
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4.2.2009 Microsoft Confirms That Its Secret Alterations of Windows Generate Problems
Microsoft has been modifying files in the Windows Vista and Windows XP operating systems without the knowledge or consent of the users that have acquired the products in good faith.
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28.9.2007 Microsoft neuters UAC in Windows 7
In an attempt to make Windows 7 generate fewer UAC (User Account Control) prompts Microsoft has neutered the mechanism to the point where its next to useless.
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30.1.2009 Common Errors and Problems when Activating Windows Vista with KMS Server
Windows Vista Business edition and Windows Vista Enterprise edition can be activated by using a corporate KMS (Key Management Service) server, without contact or communicate with Microsoft.
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14.12.2006 Fixing Windows Vista: Taming UAC
The User Account Control feature in Windows Vista has been known to drive normally level-headed people over the edge with frustration. If you find it annoying, you might be tempted to turn it off.
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1.5.2008 Microsoft: Update on Windows 7 UAC issues
Before getting into the actual news, lets take a while to understand the current Windows 7 UAC dilemma
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5.2.2009 Has Windows Vista's UAC feature failed Microsoft?
Experts agree that Microsoft's Windows Vista is relatively well-protected, but its security features such as User Account Control (UAC) have been highlighted by security experts as one reason why the operating system is far less popular than its predecessor, Windows XP.
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20.5.2008 iPod Nano May Have Some Big problems
What some analysts have billed as the "top MP3 player this fall" may have just hit a potentially damaging roadblock - its own frailty.
Complaints have begun to circle on both Web logs and Apple's own support forums surrounding an issue with the polycarbonate plastic that covers the front of the iPod Nano. Some users claim the player scratches extremely easily, enough that it makes the screen difficult to read.
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iPod, iTunes Have Problems with Vista
If you have an iPod, and plan to install Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, Apple has one word of advice for you: don't.
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4.2.2007 Microsoft Sued for Xbox 360 Problems
Microsoft has been sued by a Chicago man who bought the company's new Xbox 360 game console over alleged overheating and lockup issues. The suit, which asks for class-action status, accuses Microsoft of rushing to market a flawed system to ensure it beat competitors Sony and Nintendo to the punch.
According to Reuters, the suit seeks damages and litigation related expenses, as well as a replacement or recall of Xbox 360 consoles
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6.12.2005 Quick Fixes for Five Nasty Vista Problems
Cool, it Works! One of the most common gripes we've seen in message boards all around the Internet involve users not being able to install AMD's Cool & Quiet drivers on Windows Vista, and therefore not getting the power saving effect.
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19.3.2007 Quick Fixes for Five Nasty Vista Problems
Cool, it Works! One of the most common gripes we've seen in message boards all around the Internet involve users not being able to install AMD's Cool & Quiet drivers on Windows Vista, and therefore not getting the power saving effect. AMD's driver Web pages only contain C&Q drivers for Windows XP.
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23.3.2007 Microsoft execs saw problems with early Vista
Even some of Microsoft Corp.'s top officials struggled to make Windows Vista work smoothly when it was released, according to internal e-mails released Wednesday.
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28.2.2008 Vista SP1 Has Driver Compatibility Problems? Do Tell!
Ever since February 4, 2008, the day Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 were released to manufacturing, Microsoft made a move indicating that it was not entirely comfortable to release Vista SP1.
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4.3.2008 Turn Off or Disable User Account Control (UAC) in Windows Vista
User Account Control (UAC) is a new security feature in Windows Vista that requires all users to log on and run in standard user privileges mode instead of as administrator with full administrative rights, thus prevent unauthorized or accidental changes that could destabilize the computers or allows virus and malware to exploit the system-level privileges provided to the local administrator to attack the network security, compromise computer safety and privacy, and damage files and settings in the network.
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19.12.2006 Nvidias High-End Chipset Under Fire for Problems
Nvidia Corp., a leading designer of graphics processor and core-logic sets, is about to face criticism from enthusiasts for the problems that occur with the companys latest premium-class chipset.
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16.12.2006 Microsoft Responds To Vista's Network and Audio Problems
With the discovery last week of the connection between Vista's poor networking performance and audio activities, word quickly spread around the Net. No doubt this got Microsoft's attention, and they have responded to the issue. Thanks to pacpis for this news.
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27.8.2007 XP SP3 Download Still Live Despite Widespread Problems
Downloads of Windows XP SP3 are still live and theyre going to remain this way, despite widespread problems.
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12.5.2008 Resolve Vista SP2 Sound Problems Automatically
Microsoft is making it easy for users running Windows Vista Service Pack 2, but also SP1, to resolve sound problems affecting the operating system after the deployment of a service pack.
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15.6.2009 Getting Rid of UAC in Vista..
gurk2005 prepare this for you on his blog. If youve used Windows Vista for more than 3.7 minutes, you know what UAC (User Account Control) is..
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5.8.2007 Tech problems hit Xbox Live video service
True on-demand TV has been a long promised dream of many, and that dream appeared to move closer this week when Microsoft launched its Video Marketplace service.
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26.11.2006 What do Xbox Live problems say about Microsofts back-end infrastructure?
Whether you think the recently proposed class action lawsuit over Xbox Live service holiday outages is crazy or justified, there are undeniable problems with Microsofts back-end Live infrastructure that Microsoft needs to address.
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7.1.2008 Symantec: Vista UAC Is Still Too Chatty
In positioning itself to provide aftermarket applications for Microsoft's Vista operating system, anti-virus market leader Symantec is highlighting some shortcomings it believes to exist in the new platform's own security tools.
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15.1.2007 Microsoft: UAC not a security feature
For those who thought the User Account Control (UAC) feature introduced in Windows Vista was intended to set security boundaries, Microsoft has made a clarification: it isn't.
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15.2.2007Microsoft listens, changes UAC behavior in Windows 7
Long Zheng and Rafael had come up with proof earlier that malware can turn off UAC in Windows 7. Later Microsoft responded insisting that this is by
design and actually not a bug. Microsoft has finally agreed to do changes to the Windows 7 UAC and deliver the changes to the Windows 7 Release
Candidate. Jon DeVann and Steven Sinofsky have blogged about the two changes Microsoft is planning to bring to Windows 7 RC: UAC control panel will
run in a high integrity process Changing the level of the UAC will also prompt for confirmation There you go! Simple changes, but brings out big
differences to the way UAC behaves in Windows 7!
Read full story.....
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06.02.2009Microsoft: Update on Windows 7 UAC issues
Before getting into the actual news, lets take a while to understand the current Windows 7 UAC dilemma 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.
Read full story.....
neowin.net -
05.02.2009Windows 7 UAC has a second flaw
Long Zheng of I Started Something has uncovered a flaw in Windows 7's UAC that means malware can elevate itself to administrator privileges. This
news comes after a previously discovered flaw in Windows 7's new tiered UAC system that meant malware can disable UAC silently. Zheng has stated
"a second UAC security flaw in the Windows 7 beta's default security configuration allows a malicious application to autonomously elevate
themselves to full administrative privileges without UAC prompts or turning UAC off", which is bad news for Microsoft. It is also bad news for all
the people currently running the Windows 7 beta, leaving them with a security risk.
Read full story.....
neowin.net -
04.02.2009Opinion: Windows 7's UAC is a broken mess; mend it or end it
Peter Bright: I wrote
a few weeks ago about
changes Microsoft has made to Windows 7's User Account Control (UAC) that make the component less secure than it was in Vista. Though the company
has responded by saying it will change some of the problem behaviors, yet more problems have emerged that indicate that a real fix will be harder than
first expected. But more than that, the flaws call into question the entire purpose of the Windows UAC feature, at least in its commonplace "Admin
Approval" mode...
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07.03.2009Fix Windows 7 Sidebar With UAC Off
As many of you undoubtedly know already, in Windows 7 Beta 1, disabling UAC also causes the gadgets to stop working. This can be very annoying,
especially for the power users who turn off UAC, or for those who are turning it off in order to avoid that nasty token elevation bug that rears it's
ugly head out of random on some machines...
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19.01.2009Windows 7 vs Windows Vista: The UAC Benchmark
One of the most hated features of Windows Vista is the
User Account
Control, or UAC in short. Many people found it annoying and chose to
disable it right away, even if this meant exposing their system to
additional security threats. In Windows 7, Microsoft has seriously changed this feature. Now users have a lot more control over it and how it works
and it should provide a better user experience. To see how much improvement this means in numbers, I have run a comparison between the default Windows
Vista and Windows 7 UAC levels. Let's see which one wins and why.
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05.08.2009Who should fix Microsoft's UAC?
One of the most discussed
features of Windows Vista is
the User Account Control (UAC)
feature. The UAC pops up
whenever something is
attempting to make use of
something that is in the
domain of the
administrator.
Many
users have complained that the
UAC is the "dialog that cries
wolf" in that it comes up so
often that users end up either
ignoring it or turning it off
-- both of which nullify the
purpose of the UAC.
ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley
argues that UAC needs an
overhaul and talks about some
of the discussions that are on
the way.
Will
Microsoft extend UAC to be
more flexible and usable by
users? Should it be left to a
Symantec to solve or should
Stardock (whom I work for)
extend it to support more
options?
What's
your view on the Windows Vista
UAC?
neowin.net -
22.02.2007Microsoft insists UAC vulnerability is not a flaw
Yesterday we reported on a major UAC security flaw where malicious hackers could potentially execute a script on a users machine by tricking into them
into opening a disguised exe. This script would disable UAC without user interaction and without the users knowledge. A Microsoft spokesperson has
provided Neowin with a response to the issue:This is not a vulnerability. The intent of the default configuration of UAC is that users don't get
prompted when making changes to Windows settings. This includes changing the UAC prompting level.
Read full story.....
neowin.net -
31.01.2009How Windows 7 UAC shapes enterprise security
There is a lot of buzz about the security features in the upcoming release of Microsofts Windows 7 operating system, especially User Account Control
(UAC).
Microsoft designed UAC to control the elevated administrator privilege that is so dangerous from an IT security
perspective. UAC debuted in Windows Vista to help reduce privilege levels of all users, non-IT and IT employees alike, when tasks were being performed
that did not require elevation. Despite these good intentions, however, Vistas UAC received a tremendous amount of negative feedback due to the number
of pop-up windows that occur during routine use of the desktop. Windows 7 features a new approach to UAC, providing a slider to control how often
UAC pop-ups occur and for which actions they are monitoring. The questions these changes raise include...
winbeta.org -
27.03.2009UAC security flaw in Windows 7 beta (with proof of concept code)
Long Zheng: This is dedicated to every ignorant “tech journalist” who cried wolf about UAC in Windows Vista. A
change to User Account Control (UAC) in Windows 7
(beta) to make it “less annoying” inadvertently clears the path for a simple but ingenius override that renders UAC disabled without
user interaction. For the security conscious, a workaround is also provided at the end. First and foremost, I want to clear up two things...
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30.01.2009Windows 7: User Account Control (UAC) overview
In part one of our overview of Windows 7, we looked into Federated Search. In part two, we look into the much criticized feature of Windows Vista -
The User Account Control 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.
Read full story.....
neowin.net -
07.01.2009Microsoft: Malware can disable UAC in Windows 7 "by design"
A month has barely passed since the public beta debut of Windows 7 and we have our first horror story. UAC (user account control) was the major gripe
with Windows Vista which annoyed most tech savvy users and confused ordinary consumers. Microsoft has changed the behavior in Windows 7, lowering the
requirement for user interaction when changing system settings. The apparent downside to this is, according to reports, the way Microsoft has changed
the behavior makes it extremely easy for malware authors to write code to disable UAC without user intervention.
Read full story.....
neowin.net -
30.01.2009Changes to UAC in Vista SP1: Much less than meets the eye
A video is making the rounds showing how Vista SP1 has significantly improved Vista's immensely annoying User Account Control (UAC). But there
appears to be less to the improvement than meets the eye --- hardly any changes were made to UAC in SP1, and it remains a very big Vista annoyance.
Microsoft blogger Michael Kleef
has
made a video that he says illustrates how much better UAC is under SP1 than before SP1. It very nicely shows that when you create a new folder in
Program Files, you only need to go through one UAC prompt under Vista SP1, rather than four previously.
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17.05.2008Has Windows Vista's UAC feature failed Microsoft?
Experts agree that Microsoft's Windows Vista is relatively well-protected, but its security features -- such as User Account Control (UAC) -- have
been highlighted by security experts as one reason why the operating system is far less popular than its predecessor, Windows XP.
According to Scott Charney, vice president of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group, UAC was designed to give users more control over the
applications they run and help them make better security decisions by providing them with more information.
However, the main
problem with Vista's UAC, according to Charney, is that it prompts the user far too often...
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20.05.2008PDC 2008: Sinofsky acknowledges Vista UAC is a problem, Windows 7 adds options
Giving a nod to developers who've apparently given a lot of feedback, as well as "certain commercials," Microsoft's platform chief Steven
Sinofsky acknowledged that perhaps User Account Control in Windows Vista may have been...a little annoying. In turn, Windows 7 has additional UAC
settings...
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28.10.2008Microsoft dismisses Windows 7 UAC security flaw, continues to insist it is "by design"
Long Zheng: I’m not too sure if Microsoft is on the same page as I am, but a Microsoft spokesperson has emailed me in response to the
Windows 7 UAC security flaw I wrote about and demonstrated
yesterday. In summary, Microsoft claims this is “not a vulnerability”, is intended behavior and again indicates will not be changed.
No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. They’re (again) indicating it will not be fixed in the final version of Windows 7.
winbeta.org -
31.01.2009Mark Russinovich takes an indepth look at Vista's User Account Control
Mark takes a deep dive
into UAC in the June issue of
TechNet Magazine. Learn how
UAC’s technologies make it
easier than in previous
versions of Windows to run as
a standard user, including
when and how Windows uses file
system and Registry
virtualization, how processes
request and obtain elevated
privileges, and how Windows
Integrity Mechanism changes
the Windows security
model.
User
Account Control (UAC) is an
often misunderstood feature in
Windows Vista. In my
three-part TechNet Magazine
series on Windows Vista kernel
changes, available online at
http://www.technetmagazine.com
/>technetmagazine.com, I
didn’t cover UAC because I
felt that it merited its own
article.
In this
article I discuss the problems
UAC solves and describe the
architecture and
implementation of its
component technologies. These
technologies include the
refactoring of operations that
previously required
administrative rights,
lightweight virtualization to
help programs run correctly
without administrative rights,
the ability for programs to
explicitly request
administrative rights, and
isolation of administrative
processes from
non-administrative processes
running on the same user
desktop.
winbeta.org -
24.05.2007Symantec shows Microsoft how to do UAC
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: Security company Symantec has released a tool that helps to make Vista’s UAC (User Account Control) feature clearer and
less of a pain to use.
Norton UAC Tool (which, I
will warn you right from the start is currently in beta) is a replacement to the UAC prompts that you normally see. It has two usability-related
features to offer...
winbeta.org -
11.10.2008Microsoft agrees to fix UAC security hole in Windows 7
It looks like after all the huffing and puffing, the house finally blew down. Via the Engineering 7 blog, Microsoft announced today that it has
changed it's mind regarding the
critical UAC security hole discovered in
Windows 7, and that it would indeed be fixed.
"
With this feedback and a lot more we are going to deliver two changes to the
Release Candidate that well all see. First, the UAC control panel will run in a high integrity process, which requires elevation. That was already in
the works before this discussion and doing this prevents all the mechanics around SendKeys and the like from working. Second, changing the level of
the UAC will also prompt for confirmation." Microsoft initially declined to fix the issue stating that the behavior was by design
and that their decision was based on user feedback generated from Windows Vista.
What does this fix mean for the you? Now, even at the
default prompt level, making any changes to the UAC settings will generate a prompt, preventing malware from disabling UAC without you knowing.
Good job Microsoft, we knew you could do it!
jcxp.net -
06.02.2009Hospital: Vista just what the doctor ordered
IT shops from a variety of industries have cited the same Windows Vista deployment problems during
SearchSecurity.com's year-long look
at Microsoft's latest operating system: application incompatibility and a dislike of User Account Control (UAC) pop-up boxes. Because of these
issues, analysts expect a slow adoption rate to continue.
But Keith Brown, network administrator at Gwinnett Medical Center in
Lawrenceville, Ga., tells a more optimistic tale of Vista deployment in his environment. Like others, he has run into compatibility problems and has
gotten complaints about UAC. But in the final analysis, he has determined that Vista's security enhancements outweigh those negatives.
winbeta.org -
06.12.2007
