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How slow can your vista boot? The 3 systems I use it boots in under 15 seconds to the login prompt from after POST (I dont count POST because that time varies by mfg and how they set it up)

I was talking about from login to desktop being all nice and smooth lol

-Rich-

For those who know what there doing have UAC on and rarely get 1 UAC prompt a day :/

That line there, is the best way to find the people who think they know a lot about computers, but they have no idea what UAC is, much less how it works and what it actually does.

Right.. Fact is basically no application needs to run with admin rights, so while using programs that follow decade old MSDN multiuser guidelines you do not have an issue with UAC.

UAC is a simple enforcer of long standing guidelines for how programs should run under Windows. Any issues you have with it, are infact with your own usage of the operating systems or the programs you use.

it's so nice to hear sensible things like this from you, HawkMan, FusionOpz, I was getting SO ****ed off with all the vista previews and reviews totally mocking UAC, even actively promoting the idea of the 'solution' being to disable it, normally with no mention of the inevitable down side to doing so. And all of this coming from so-called professionals.
(that and complaining how it should ask for a password or it's useless, when it DOES when your not running as admin all the time, which they should not be doing.)

The only related thing I might consider worse has been software companies flat out saying 'disable UAC' in their forums/FAQ's for their solution to their own software shortcomings, again with no mention of how it's massively reducing the customers system security.

10 minutes?!! I think SP1 wont fix it for you, it's a service or a program causing it I believe.

Anyone that disables UAC deserves slow boot times.

I don't like it. I know what I'm doing, I just don't need it. So.. maybe I should go back to XP?....

Yes you should

Ain't that the truth.

For the record, I like Vista after getting used to it, but yeah, no way was it ready when it was released. I don't care what any "Vista lover" says.

No software is ready when it's released. It's impossible to test something on every computer.

Because I can't be bothered clicking the little pop-up window everytime I want to do something, and I find UAC makes Vista take and an when installing programs, it's like is sits there wondering if it should give you the pop-up or not

Last edited by Elektricity on 15 Dec 2007 - 02:14

It sounds like you're either over administrating your computer and/or you have legacy software that requires admin access.

I'm curious, which is it? I don't encounter UAC dialogs that often so I want to find out why it's an issue with some people.

Because I don't need it, plain and simple. I know what I'm doing, I can configure my computer correctly, I use secure software and I'm behind a hardware firewall. UAC is nothing but an annoyance that tries to control what I do not want it to.

It's exactly the same as running a root 24/7 on Linux or OSX. No one does it because it's stupid. The same reasoning applies here. No security software can offer the same protection as the LUA principle.

Because I have a pretty sufficient technical knowledge of computers, and I'm not a kid to the computer world. Grown ups don't have to ask, and that's exactly why I turned off UAC. I don't need to know if I am SURE than I am SURE I want to run this program. That's simply just me.

For lots of people this is asking why people like coffee or not. It's purely opinion based upon knowledge for that specific person.

ah again the crowd of "I know what I do so I don't need it" crowd, wich in reality by saying that is just proving that they dont know what UAC ir or does.

I thought everyone runs root 24/7 because its so easy and simple

Or, maybe, they just know what they are doing and really don't need it?

If they truly 'know what they are doing', they'd realize there is absolutely nothing they can do that offers the same protection against exploits that UAC does.

Actually, I do run root 24/7 and I have UAC disabled, and guess what? It all works perfectly!
If I have my doubts about an app, then I'm smart enough to run it in a sandbox or something.
Trust me, some people DO know how to handle computers, and keep them running nicely without the need to be bugged about every single change you make that could hurt your system but probably doesn't.
Remember the old DOS days? We ran about everything on our computers, there were no restrictions and somehow we managed not to mess up our computers. But maybe that's because there were far less computer users.

There was also no internet and the only way to get a virus was off a floppy disc from someone else.

UAC has saved my ass tonnes of times, especially when visiting pr0n sites.. like I would be doing my own thing and all of the sudden UAC comes on.. im like wtf! and then click "no" and say "**** you virus/worm, im not getting STD's"

Holy shnikeys.... you can get an STD from Porn? (runs to the clinic)

lmao

god i lolled so hard

Wow, that's weird... maybe by saying "knowing what they're doing', they mean that they actually do know what they're doing and don't need something else that protects the way UAC does!

No really, they do need it, and if they say not, they don't know as much about systems or security as they either think or claim they do.

Look at Linux, and OSX, see how few security problems they really genuinely have? now take a look at the account setup, oh yeah, that's it, you do not run as root 24/7, or in fact ever unless you absolutely have to to install or configure something.

your logic is flawed. Next you'll tell us you don't need a seat belt when driving because "you know what you are doing"

Show screen shots of this, or it didn't happen.

Yes, static images convey time very well.

Thank you for your ignorance.

Oh.. I see. Anyone who prefers XP is ignorant. Rigggghhhht. Becasue, of course, XP doesn't have bloody-useless-waste-of-space-UAC in the first place. So I must be ignorant for wanting to use a version of Windows that doesn't wate my time or my system clocks with the ****tarded UAC.
Yeah. Right.

With comments like that, who needs trolls? I wonder why I continue to browse this site.

UAC is not so much of a waste of time when you learn to silence the cancel/allow dialogs while still having UAC running to avoid running into issues with elevation, boot time, among other things.

Its your choice, I say if it suits your needs then stick with xp sp3 but if your system is up to par vista sp1 is a considerable upgrade(my vista is super spiffy so im happy no big problems so far), remember xp has been out since october 25, 2001,thats a long time for ms to spruce it up but as i remember xp has a had a slew of problems since then, vista on the other hand is only in its 1st year so i say just give it some time....

*Changed. Neowin always links to the original source. Thanks for posting about it.

Post about it on some popular news sites. Then post a link on digg. Neowin shouldn't be stealing your stories. Maybe they'll give you 200 dollars?

j/k :p.

Really? Interesting, not saying I don't believe you but Ryan knew nothing of the issue (or at least seemed not to) when I was explaining it to him. Eh whatever lol.

I may not have known about it but that testing was MY Work and i didnt get one bit of credit from Hdrive from it, Instead its directly plagerized on his website, then submitted here. Nicely done though, Jacob if your reading this, remove the post all together or SOURCE it correctly.

Re-read the article, maybe then you'll understand why your comment was idiotic.

Thats NOT what that 30sec means, its how long to display the OS list if yu have more than one OS installed.

Great, someone still spreading misinformation about prefetch. If you think you know anything about how Windows works, get that idea out of your head right now.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ryanmy/archive/2005/05/25/421882.aspx

I can has MinWin?

So it detects viruses and removes them now?
No, I didn't think so either.

UAC isn't a AV program, but that doesn't mean it's not a "security package" either. So wtf is your problem?

Because security comes into play with viruses and spyware. Since UAC actually does very little for it, it's hardly a security package. (i've already had customer's Vista pc's in for spyware, viruses etc.)

So UAC hasn't helped much (except annoy users with boxes) - is my problem. Deal with it.

Maybe you should tell them not to automatically click Yes to the UAC prompt without reading what's going on.

That virus or spyware won't run if you have UAC block it from the start.

The fact average users don't know what they're clicking yes to and get infected doesn't mean UAC doesn't do it's job.

If it can't prompt you and automatically elevates itself, why not just turn it off because it's certainly not doing anything.

You installed an Adware without realizing it? sorry to say this but this is exactly why UAC is coded, YOU need it, not the rest of us who never installed an Adware "without realizing it" since 10 years.

Each one to his own, nothing wrong with keeping it enabled or disabled.

What happens in the future when one of your apps that you seem to trust fully as being secure is found out to have a nice security bug that lets people take over your system?

It's not like it hasen't happend before you know. Quicktime? Hell even Norton AV had that problem. And there are others out there.

So, again, how do you know or realise if some "trusted" app you've been using all this time with UAC off (because you kept getting prompts when you use it or others), isn't hacked and being used to do something else on your system?

UAC isn't meant to stop you from installing adware or spyware only. You do realise this right? I mean, hell, you're a PC expert.

I emphasized on adware since that was the point of the poster.

I update every software on my PC on the same day of the update/patch release, sure a hole can be published before a patch is out, but heck, common sense plays a pretty big part in this. I didn't ever face any problem with this philosophy for 10+ years, and well, I'm not running a CIA server to tighten the security so I had to get a prompt in my face each time I want to delete a folder.

As I said, each one to his own, apparently it's too hard to understand to some people who support UAC as it's the next big thing, although a computer n00b will click "Allow" to allow a spyware/virus/attack etc to be executed (I see it happen). It's like people who advise to set a black/dark wallpaper to lengthen the lifespan of a monitor, silly

Run software that was made prior to 2006. Games mostly.

Right, because the only time UAC pops up is when you're installing drivers.

I can run old games just fine without being administrator. What games really require you to be an administrator? Any game that puts its save files in My Documents or the Saved Games folder doesn't need admin access. If it IS a game that puts save files in the Program Files folder, just install it outside of the main Program Files folder or on another drive.
I play lot of old CNC games mostly, and they all run perfectly without admin access.

There are quite a few actually. To be honest I disabled UAC before I really put it through the wringer. In the short time I did have it enabled (a few days at most) though, I installed Battlefield 2 and what would happen is you'd join a game and a few minutes later you'd get booted with a punkbuster error. To get around it you could right click and run as Administrator. I understand punkbuster has been updated to address this, although I've never personally tried it since then. There are a lot of games that simply running as Administrator "fixes".

You could get around it by installing into directories other than Program Files, but then you run the risk of mods failing to install or just not work right. Admittedly, this isn't a Microsoft or Vista shortcoming but sloppy coding on the part of the software writers. The common denominator though when things get weird is frequently UAC and the choice becomes either work around everything else, discard the software, or simply disable UAC. I chose the latter.

I have about 100 games that I revisit occasionally, and some date back to 1992. Heh, one game Civilization 2, won't play the game music unless an analog cable connects the cdrom to the cdrom sound input of the soundcard. That has nothing to do with UAC or Vista, just thought it was interesting trivia to show how some things were coded very rigidly.

Another thing that happened with UAC was I installed a program and it installed into the Program Files directory, but it never prompted me. I think it was 7-zip, but could be mistaken on that. Anyway, it was a program that also integrated into the Explorer shell as a right click option. When it installed and UAC never popped up the first thing I though was "OK, not only is it annoying but I can't trust it either" It let this program install without me having to run it as Administrator and never even blinked. To me UAC is at best a False sense of security, and at worst an over engineered added layer of complexity.

heheh

condoms suck.... so does UAC!

That's such a bad analogy it isn't even funny.

That's funny because I've never ever heard anyone say they don't use them because they know what they're doing. Bad analogy is right.

You haven't? I have.

You must know some really dumb people then.

There are a truly awful lot of 'unexpected' but well cared for children, single mothers, unwanted children, orphans, shotgun weddings, and STD's all around the world simply because a lot of people sadly really are THAT STUPID, and stupidity often increases exponentially with arousal and hormones.

Can you list some of them please? I've never run across a program that wouldn't work with UAC on.

Even for those that don't you can automatically run poorly coded applications as an elevated process.

MikTex seems to have problems with it, as on demand missing packages need to be installed from the command line window. Somehow the processes are started in a way so that UAC makes problems. (even when the command window is started with admin rights)

I think some of them do it because they bought Vista and now have to defend everything about it religiously. Because if someone else does not like something about the OS it is a personal insult to them. They can praise UAC all they want but it was a VERY poorly designed feature. The idea itself was good but it ended up being an annoying bandaid that everyone eventually turns off or ignores. Look at other operating systems that have great security like OS X and Linux. They're secure without constantly throwing popup alerts in your face every time you want to do something extremely dangerous to your system like change the time or rename a folder.

Last edited by TRC on 15 Dec 2007 - 19:56

Everything he just said +1

Right on bro. Its one of the weirdest things. UAC is a catch all for MS(they hate it when you say that too) I didn't need it yesterday and I don't need it today. My system is as locked down as I want it and I will never allow UAC to run on any system I own.. EVER! So stick it.

Name a single piece of software you own that can stop exploits in any piece of software you own from doing system-wide harm.

VMWare?

Seriously, it's not just a "Are you sure?" permission asker. It provides file and registry virtualization and internet explorer 7 runs in protected mode when it's on. Also it enables User Interface Privilege Isolation, which combats code injection exploits.

I recommend you to enable it, but put it on quite mode, you dont even notice it.