If it's not broken, then why would you turn it off?

Brad your intensions are good to such a great work. But they fully at MS intend to protect their software at any cost. For the time being I would just give instruction before installing any software via Stardock Central or even Stardock Central progam itself. That the user turn the UAC off! {If he has not already done so.}

The next best thing would be to offer such a design to Technet and see what happens to the design. With good intensions I believe the Techs would get approval to add your design to a new update for Vista OS and all would be well with things. This would also put the hammer down on other programs working along the same line. Such as Mcafee's SiteAdvisor and this could also startup some new ideas for them too.

I think you are on the right track and should follow through at whatever cost it maybe. It maybe that Stardock has an idea to venture into security for windows and espically it's own programs. This to gain a new name for Stardock with being safe and a excellent product to consider.

These people that say leave it to MS to fix have no idea what they are saying. UAC was designed around other software that is presently on the market today to make internet surfing safer for all. Thus it was the full intensions of MS to do this for Vista. But Vista is still a babe and it will go places here in the next few years too. So will Stardock as well espically.

The next best thing is to get in on the goings on at MS via a conference and let them know where you stand on the idea. A good start would be to attend the next conference here...

http://www.microsoft.com/events/mix/default.mspx

With that in mind and plenty of ammo for the right stuff. The work in progress for Stardock will take a major leap forward!Good luck and I hope that this all is helpful. You are on the right track Brad and your people there are to be congradulated on such great work for all the new Vista software they have done so well on.

SGT  

I vote against such practices.
This is nothing different as the super user account in a NIX environment.
Every program that has acces to system files and has the intention to change something, like the majority of Stardock programs, should first ask permission from the user.
I turned this back on, and unless you want to change something on the system, this UAC thing does not pop-up : it does not pop up when performing work (Word, Excel, ...), it does not pop up when accessing the internet, unless you download and install something (works as designed), it does not pop up when playing games, it does not pop up while chatting, it does not pop up when watching movies or listening to music ...
In short, it does not bug me while using the pc, only when I want to make changes.
And if you are really in a spring clean mood, you can always temporary turn UAC off until you are finished (but do not forget to turn it back on afterwards).
BTW, I don't see how it can block the communications with a MAC ?
Messenger, Skype, Googletalk and GMAIL conversations all work flawlessly on my PC, with UAC enabled.
And do not forget the warning of MS if you try to change it : they will sue you. It is written clearly in the EULA.
Jan

Just go for it

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

I desperately want to turn UAC back on but I do NOT want a warning to stop my whole system just because I go into display settings. I dont know my microsoft did not add a "dont prompt me for this again" option....even if only for administrator accounts.

Heck yes! is what i say.

Or at least make it remember stuff..

I dont mind the 1st time it asks, but even before getting to the UAC you have to hit ok 1-3 times (do you weant to install #1 ok, vistablabla has to get permission from the UAC agreed? #2 ok, and then the UAC itself.. #3 ok.) and a night of using my puter leaves me realy realy annoyed because of the constant holding my hand...

I friggin hate the uac

Fix the broken piece of crap!

Rabidrobot,
thanks for this instructive article.
Unix users are for years used to the Administrator (or Super User) concept.
People have been bashing Microsoft because Windows was so vulnerable to viruses and, more important, users. Finally they come up with something that has been proved in the industry times and times again, and they get accused of delivering a broken piece of software ?
I really don't get it.
As you stated, most users will only rarely be confronted with this screen. Most of the time when they try to do something that was not intended for a normal user.
I consider myself a power user, even if I am not an experienced programmer. First thing I did was turning UAC off. Second thing I did was forcing not supported drivers to the system (heck, I picked all the parts myself, I know what I am doing!). Third thing I did was a complete clean install because my USB storage was not recognized anymore.
Would UAC have saved me ? No, because I am a power user, and know how to counter it.
But it would (and will) block a lot of people from doing stupid things.
Brad, Stardock, I strongly advice against adapting the security rules to your needs.
Instead, try to play the game. I granted Administrator rights to Stardock Central, and it asks me only once for confirmation.
So the feature most asked, memorize the granted acces for a period of time, is already build in. Only you need to be Administrator to activate it .
It is a new concept to Windows, and we will need to learn to work with it, but in the long run, we will all win, because viruses and trojans etc will have less opportunities to make havoc.
If one company starts to change the rules, others will follow, and we are back to zero.
Imagine a virus that makes use of Stardocks code to alter the security rules to its benefit.
How do you think Stardock will come out of that ?
Please read the mentioned article if you did not do it yet :
http://www.jimmah.com/vista/security/uac.aspx
Jan

Yes!!! I have to say that I'm not a big Linux user simply because I think I just can't do in Linux what I can do in Windows. Windows runs everything that I use from games to apps to whatever... it just works because "it's the most popular OS in the world", not because it's good. With that said, I would have LOVED Vista if it came with a UAC that acted like Linux's does. When I played arround with Mandrake I loved that feature... you'd try and do something and it would prompt for the password. People knew that you're going into a special mode for that one process... it took a little thinking and realization from the user. I don't know what they didn't do it this way. The damn thing should prompt when something is trying to install or when something is trying to make system or registry changes or run a process that's not considered "normal". Why the f*** does it have to prompt me when I go into display properties? I know why I'm going in there... I freaking asked it to. Have any of you ever seen any spyware that changes your resolution on the fly? I sure haven't, so there's no need to ass-pucker the display properties with UAC. Network settings... yes, maybe, if it's advanced settings.

In the end, a lof of us will note one thing. We're all getting a lot of UAC prompts because we're trying to do things in Vista in "The old Windows way". They have changed a lot of the layout of the system and where stuff is and you'll notice that if you actually do things the "Vista Way" you will not get any UAC prompts unless you're really digging through stuff. I think MS must have hired some Mac people to design the visual layout of Office 2007 and Vista because when I sit in front of a Vista/Office 2007 system right now I feel about as visually dumb as when I sit in front of a Mac.

I think we all have to kind of forget how we do things in previous versions of Windows in order to feel "more at home" with Vista.

"Why the f*** does it have to prompt me when I go into display properties?"

I just checked it for you, it does not prompt me. Right clicked on the desktop, and went right in. No UAC bugging me. I double checked, yes I have UAC activated.
So I made a second, standard user to be sure. Only got prompted when I wanted to check if UAC was activated - while logged in as this new user- to enter my password. Which is expected, because I could deactivate UAC from here.

I really don't understand what the fuss is. I only get prompted when I want to change something, like installing a new program, change system settings and so on.
And for code not being compatible with Vista due to this ? I found out that if I run the program as Administrator, it does always what it is supposed to do, just the way it did under XP.

Now I can understand that a programmer has more problems with this concept, as he has to think how his code will be influenced by UAC. But a normal user that is working with his PC (going to the internet, write a letter, play a game, chat, ...) would not be bothered often.

I work with Linuw and Unix systems every day. This is just the same principle as root acces in Unix systems.

Jan

YES...the UAC is getting to annoy me and I may turn it off soon!

if the UAC is as annoying as service pack 2 was with its informmation bar and outright refusal to allow for the remembering of certain things (dealing with website development), then I am quite glad I switched to the Apple.

I found out that if I run the program as Administrator, it does always what it is supposed to do, just the way it did under XP.

Actually there are CRUCIAL differences. For instance: applications running at a higher privilege level (i.e.; as the Administrator) cannot accept files dragged & dropped from applications running at lower privilege levels. In fact, they ignore ALL messages sent to them by lower privilege applications.

For instance, if you decide to run ObjectDock as the Admin, then you will find yourself unable to drag files from Explorer and drop them into it because Explorer is running with a normal privilege level. If you don't run ObjectDock as the Admin, then, for instance, time synchronizing docklets (which run at the same privilege level as ObjectDock) will fail to set the system time, because - and that is ANOTHER example of the problem with the UAC - far too many things in Windows require Admin rights, like setting the system time.

You see, it makes sense, from a Corporation point of view, for things like setting the system time, changing display resolution, and LOTS and LOTS of other small things like that to require Admin privileges. For the Home user, however, it makes no sense at all!

Another problem is that there is no mechanism for applications to LOWER their privilege level (why the hell not? How would this break security?!). A real life example for this is application A that is launched from the installer (you know, when you install an application and the Setup program has a small checkbox that says 'Launch Application A' at the end): because the Setup program runs with a high privilege level, so will application A. Because application A cannot lower its privilege level, it will then be unable to, say, accept files dragged & dropped from Explorer. To the user, it will look like application A is broken. So what is the solution? Never to give the user the convenience to launch an application right after Setup? Blah!

And yet another problem: under Vista, applications running at normal privilege levels do not have write access to folders under c:\Program Files\, and this includes their own folder. Since a lot of applications save configuration data (INI files, for instance) in their own folder, this alone is going to be the source of many problems (Microsoft did come up with a mechanism to work around it, though, but it has its own problems). The solution is to start saving configuration files and the like in the My Documents or Application Data folders. But where to save themes and skins, then? If you save them to the 'My Documents' folder, the downloaded themes will then only be available to that user (since the My Documents folder is a per User folder), if you save them to 'Application Data', then the user will have a hard time navigating to this folder because it is hidden by default!

The problem with the UAC is not that it's a bad thing per se, just that the details and problems were not ironed out first in Microsoft's hurry to get Vista out the door. As it is, application developers have to go to great pains to change their applications to run properly on Vista, only to (probably) see all those efforts go to waste when Vista SP1 comes out and most of the problems get ironed out.