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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.
windows - comments - 27.9.2009

The Problem with Creative and Windows Vista

Don't get me wrong, they make great hardware, but Creative is not known for their efficiency in writing drivers for their hardware. Their Beta 1 drivers are relatively buggy compared to other Beta 1 drivers on the market for Graphics Cards, Network Cards etc, but with a big enough target market and enough technical staff I see no reason why they can't keep up.
windows - comments - 2.7.2006

Microsoft: Bots a Big Problem for Windows

Malicious bots are becoming quite common, with six out of every ten computers scanned by the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool found to be infected, Microsoft said Monday. Altogether, the application has removed malicious bots from about 3.5 million PCs.
windows - comments - 13.6.2006

Windows 7: Problem Steps Recorder overview

Over the next few weeks we will be adding many more focus items on Windows 7 including Touch, Windows 7 networking and media enhancements. Stay tuned for the ultimate Windows 7 focus from Neowin.net. Here is an overview of Problem Steps Recorder.
windows - comments - 11.1.2009

Workaround for HTC Hero Sync Problem in Windows 7

HTC latest masterpieces, HTC Hero, packs with the most coveted features in the modern mobile world, including powered by Google’s famous Android operating system.
windows - comments - 23.8.2009

Vista's Biggest Problem Remains Windows XP, Survey Says

Windows Vista biggest worry shouldn't be rival operating systems from Apple Inc. or Red Hat Inc., but competition from Microsoft's own Windows XP.
windows - comments - 15.11.2007

Do you have problem with concentration?

The Problem with Bundling

On Friday I spoke with two product executives from a major OEM about some forthcoming new PCs and notebooks. During the conversation, I asked about their Windows Media Center strategy. The OEM no longer has one, and Vista integration is the reason.
microsoft - comments - 10.12.2007

The Problem With Netbooks

The market for netbooks is an artificial construct, a subset of notebooks that isn't a sustainably distinct category.
windows - comments - 5.3.2009

Microsoft Works on Comcast E-Mail Problem

Microsoft said Friday that some people who use its Hotmail and MSN e-mail services are not receiving e-mail sent from Comcast accounts and other Internet service providers.

Brooke Richardson, a group product manager with Microsoft's MSN online division, said the problem appears to be due to an increase in e-mail volumes, which it is attributed in part to the Sober Internet worm.
microsoft - comments - 5.12.2005

Want To Upgrade Vista Without Visiting The Store? No Problem

Microsoft testers are getting an early look at new functionality designed to allow users to upgrade to more powerful and, presumably, more expensive versions of Vista.

Microsoft is testing a new Windows upgrade mechanism, known as Windows Anytime Upgrade. A first iteration of the technology is integrated into the February CTP (Community Technology Preview) releases of Vista that went to testers starting the week of Feb. 20.
windows - comments - 7.3.2006

How can Microsoft overcome Vistas lingering image problem?

Mike Nash, Corporate Vice President of Windows Product Management, has a tough problem on his hands.
windows - comments - 2.5.2008

Vistas big problem: 92 percent of developers ignoring it

And to think Microsoft used to be popular with the developer crowd... Not anymore. A recent report from Evans Data shows fewer than one in 10 software developers writing applications for Windows Vista this year. Eight percent.
windows - comments - 17.6.2008

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.
windows - comments - 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.
windows - comments - 4.2.2009

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 it’s next to useless.
windows - comments - 30.1.2009

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.
windows - comments - 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
windows - comments - 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.
windows - comments - 20.5.2008

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.
windows - comments - 19.12.2006

Getting Rid of UAC in Vista..

gurk2005 prepare this for you on his blog. If you’ve used Windows Vista for more than 3.7 minutes, you know what UAC (User Account Control) is..
windows - comments - 5.8.2007

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.
windows - comments - 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.
windows - comments - 15.2.2007

Vista’s UAC needs an overhaul. Ideas?

It seems like everyone, other than possibly Microsoft's Vista team itself, seems to believe that the User Account Control (UAC) in Vista already needs an overhaul. The question is, who is going to do it? And what form will it take?
windows - comments - 22.2.2007

Dear Microsoft: Please get UAC right this time

UAC could certainly have been handled better. It does something the security industry has been well aware of for a long time — it creates the “cry wolf” problem of popup fatigue (people turn off or ignore the popups after awhile).
microsoft - comments - 30.5.2008

Microsoft backpedals on UAC flaw

After initially describing the ability for code to change UAC (user account Control) levels on Windows 7 beta without generating a UAC prompt as “by design” Microsoft has now agreed to make changes to the Release Candidate code to tighten up security with regards to this issue.
microsoft - comments - 6.2.2009

Vista UAC: 7 Steps to delete a shortcut

Here is a interesting submission, although I'd like to point out that Microsoft is changing this behavior in future builds. Here's what would of happened if it weren't for dedicated beta testers and our loud vocal concerns being heard.
windows - comments - 5.6.2006

Suggestion for the Universally Annoying Creation (UAC)

I like to think of UAC as Universally Annoying Creation, because in the history of Windows this is the one thing that really ****es me off. Many people have ranted about it but not really come up with a solution to this annoyance.
microsoft - comments - 6.9.2006

Russinovich: Malware will thrive, even with Vista’s UAC

Despite all the anti-malware roadblocks built into Windows Vista, a senior Microsoft official is lowering the security expectations, warning that viruses, password-stealing Trojans and rootkits will continue to thrive as malware authors adapt to the new operating system.
windows - comments - 24.4.2007

Analyst: Vista's UAC Will Reform Developers

When it comes to the new security functions in Windows Vista, User Account Control is the one people tend to scratch their heads over, Gartner Analyst Neil MacDonald said during his presentation on implementing Vista security at Gartner's IT Security Summit here on June 4.
windows - comments - 8.6.2007

Microsoft 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.....
neowin.net - 06.02.2009

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 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 - 05.02.2009

Windows 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 - 07.01.2009

PDC 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...
betanews.com - 28.10.2008

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. 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 - 04.02.2009

Opinion: 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...




winbeta.org - 07.03.2009

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.



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...




winbeta.org - 20.05.2008

Disabling UAC Slows Vista's Bootup Time?

Blogger Chris123NT is reporting that the LUAFV driver, which controls UAC in Vista, can cause latency issues if the controversial feature is disabled. Apparently, once UAC is disabled, a registry tweak that disables the driver in question also needs to be applied if the user wants to have solid boot times back (improved boot times obviously vary from machine to machine). The problem occurs in both Vista RTM and the current beta build of Vista SP1 (6001.17042). This seems to me like yet another reason why it’s not a good idea to disable UAC, but I'm sure UAC haters will have a very different perspective. It will be interesting to see how fast Microsoft will patch this problem, considering how important security is nowadays.


neowin.net - 15.12.2007

Fix 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...




winbeta.org - 19.01.2009

Windows 7: Problem Steps Recorder overview

So far, in our Windows 7 Overview series, we have published the following: Windows 7 beta quick reviewWindows 7: Easy Connect Windows 7: Action Center Overview Windows 7: User Account Control (UAC) Overview Windows 7: Calibate Your Display Windows 7: Federated Search Windows 7: Device Stage Windows 7: Internet Explorer 8 OverviewOver the next few weeks we will be adding many more focus items on Windows 7 including Touch, Windows 7 networking and media enhancements. Stay tuned for the ultimate Windows 7 focus from Neowin.net. Here is an overview of Problem Steps Recorder. Microsoft recently published a demonstration of Problem Steps Recorder (PSR) in action.

Read full story.....
neowin.net - 12.01.2009

Windows 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.




winbeta.org - 05.08.2009

Should "Standard User" be the default in Windows 7?

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: It seems clear to me that combining an Admin accounts with Windows 7’s “low nag” User Account Control (UAC) setting is a bad idea. Problem is, Admin accounts and “low nag” UAC settings will be the default for millions of people buying Windows 7-based PCs.



The problem with systems running with these two settings is that it’s possible to use a code-injection vulnerability to silently run code or other applications with administrative privileges behind the user’s back. Even Windows super-guru Mark Russinovich acknowledges that a problem exists...




winbeta.org - 11.06.2009

Who 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 - 22.02.2007

Microsoft 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 - 31.01.2009

How 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 œadministrator� 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 œpop-up� windows that occur during routine use of the desktop. Windows 7 features a new approach to UAC, providing a œslider� to control how often UAC pop-ups occur and for which actions they are monitoring. The questions these changes raise include...




winbeta.org - 27.03.2009

BeyondTrust tames Vista's UAC pop-ups

Management vendor BeyondTrust Tuesday unveiled software that lets companies nearly eradicate the pop-ups that plague Windows Vista's user account control feature.



BeyondTrust released Privilege Manager 3.5 with a feature that plugs into Microsoft's Group Policy infrastructure and lets IT control administrative rights needed to access some applications.



Vista's UAC feature was touted as a way to avoid giving users administrative rights to their desktops. With those rights, users can install software and control the entire machine -- and so can malicious programs that secure administrative rights. UAC was designed to curb that problem, but users quickly found that the number of pop-up windows UAC generated was confusing at best.



"The things that were scaring us away from Vista were the hardware requirements and UAC," says Omar Ghneim, network administrator for EXCO Resources, an energy company based in Dallas. "We tried Vista on a few administrators' machines, but they couldn't handle the pop-ups and we went back to XP the next day." ..
winbeta.org - 23.08.2007

PDC 2008: Windows 7 will add a 'volume knob' to UAC

Will users feel better about Windows 7 when they have the option of turning off one of Vista's least understood features? Or will they instead make the attempt to understand it? That's the problem which Microsoft's Mike Nash is now facing...
betanews.com - 30.10.2008

UAC 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...




winbeta.org - 30.01.2009

Microsoft: 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 - 30.01.2009

Changes 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.




winbeta.org - 17.05.2008