The Great UAC Debate!

By Linkinfamous
in Microsoft (Windows)

 Share

UAC  

1412 members have voted

  1. 1. Do You Use UAC?

    • Yes
      477
    • Yes, On "Silent Mode"
      91
    • No (I use an Admin Account)
      496
    • No (I use a Standard Account)
      39
    • I don't use Windows Vista
      118

  2. 2. Have You Ever Been Saved By UAC?

    • Yes
      226
    • No
      932
    • I don't use Windows Vista
      106

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

Brandon Live Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted
/waits for Brandon to try and defend UAC yet again.....

What does that mean?

Yes, fewer prompts is better. Duh. I've never said otherwise. Heck, I was almost certainly the single most vocal person in Windows in complaining about the excess dialogs that the shell displayed before SP1 (they aren't all gone, but the worst offenders are).

SP1 removed some annoyances, and going forward you can bet we will work to reduce the number of dialogs that are shown in common tasks, as much as possible. That doesn't mean anything is wrong with the current implementation, it just means there's room for improvement.

The day that isn't true, birds will sing and the sun will shine, and all people in the world will live in harmony. And I'll be out of a job.

  • 3 weeks later...
Grand Master

+Ryster Subscriber²

Posted
  • Subscriber²
Posted

UAC does it's job. It only pops up when you try to change a system setting or write to a system area, and using a computer normally for day to day activities shouldn't trigger any UAC popups.

  • 2 weeks later...
Enthusiast

Rapid Dr3am

Posted
Posted

I turned UAC off at first, it drove me crazy when I first got a Vista machine. That was when I was installing things, then I found SQL server 2000 was blocked on start up which also bothered me. I then saw my friend get infected by malware drive-by downloads several times (same site, PICNIC). I turned it back on, only things that prompt me, are Spybot, Visual Studio 2008 and CCleaner these days.

Grand Master

zhangm Supervisor

Posted
  • Supervisor
Posted

I can see it being a good thing in a business. Having an actual, functional user privileges system has to make administration easier. As for my own machine, I run a limited privilege account and have it on all the time. I don't really care much about the prompts, its not like my entire life consists of installing and uninstalling programs anyway.

  • 1 month later...
Grand Master

ViperAFK

Posted
Posted
Im always Tweaking and messing with my system

UAC is off for me and will stay off

every time CPU-Z or HW monitor starts its a prompt

I hate prompts >_>

You can leave it on and put UAC in silent mode using TweakUAC. More secure and you get to keep IE7's protected mode and such and no prompts.

Grand Master

mad_onion

Posted
Posted
You can leave it on and put UAC in silent mode using TweakUAC. More secure and you get to keep IE7's protected mode and such and no prompts.

i really hope microsoft consider putting a silent option in windows 7. so many people are unaware that silent mode is possible and if when people went to turn off UAC they could just make it not display the prompts then that's what people would do. (or remove the option to turn it off entirely)

Grand Master

ViperAFK

Posted
Posted
silent mode = automatic elevation when a process is starting = you're pwned !

Running as admin with no UAC = even worse...It's better than people turning it completely off.

I personally leave it default with the prompts. You are doing something wrong or using poorly designed software if you are getting prompted very often. I almost never get prompted, and certainly not more often then when I do when I use linux. Basically only when I install software.

Proficient

kl33per

Posted
Posted

If I were Microsoft, I would never have made it so you could disable it in the first place. It just allows people to shoot themselves in the foot. I hope for Windows 7 that they remove that particular bit of group policy, although I think that is probably unlikely.

Mentor

jesseinsf

Posted
Posted
Running as admin with no UAC = even worse...It's better than people turning it completely off.

I personally leave it default with the prompts. You are doing something wrong or using poorly designed software if you are getting prompted very often. I almost never get prompted, and certainly not more often then when I do when I use linux. Basically only when I install software.

It also prompts for Tweaking programs that access system settings. Which is normal. Mac users get the same type of prompts for the same kind of actions. SP1 made things better.

Mentor

jesseinsf

Posted
Posted
Ok so i have to ask why you guys care what i do with my computer ???

Well many people complain about UAC when there is nothing wrong with it after SP1....All operating systems have this type of prompting. Your tweaking programs should activate UAC prompts because they are accessing and changing sytem settings. Viruses and hackers also change system settings. So that is why Tweaking programs get the UAC prompts.

Proficient

CrimsonBetrayal

Posted
Posted

There's a lot of people using Vista!

I'll stick with XP until they actually bring out something revolutionary again, or something that actually maintains compatibility with all the software I use for work. Foresight, not so good.

Grand Master

NEVER85

Posted
Posted
There's a lot of people using Vista!

I'll stick with XP until they actually bring out something revolutionary again, or something that actually maintains compatibility with all the software I use for work. Foresight, not so good.

Not Vista's fault you use old software.

Mentor

jesseinsf

Posted
Posted

When in says "Have you ever been saved by UAC? It says more people answered "No". That answer is false because it is also counting people who don't use UAC or have it on silent mode. These Polls should have the ability to not allow people to answer questions that don't pertain to them. Example: In this poll if you answered yes to using UAC then you will be allowed to answer the next question. If you answered no or you use it in silent mode then it will not allow you to answer the other question which is "Has UAC ever saved you??:):)

Grand Master

Brandon Live Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

Nevermind the fact that most peope "saved" by UAC will never know it. That's like asking if their eating habits have helped them avoid getting sick. They'll never know if drinking less orange juice would have meant they'd have gotten sick sometime when they didn't.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

  • Posts

    • Glary Utilities 6.43.0.47

      By Copernic · Posted

      Glary Utilities 6.43.0.47 by Razvan Serea Glary Utilities offers numerous powerful and easy-to-use system tools and utilities to fix, speed up, maintain and protect your PC. Glary Utilities allow you to clean common system junk files, as well as invalid registry entries and Internet traces. You can manage and delete browser add-ons, analyze disk space usage and find duplicate files. You can also view and manage installed shell extensions, encrypt your files from unauthorized access and use, split large files into smaller manageable files and then rejoin them. Furthermore, Glary Utilities includes the options to find, fix, or remove broken Windows shortcuts, manage the programs that start at Windows startup and uninstall software. All Glary Utilities tools can be accessed through an eye-pleasing and totally simplistic interface. Glary Utilities 6.43.0.47 changelog: Optimized Memory Defrager: Optimized the clipboard cleaning algorithm, increasing speed by 5%. Optimized Wipe Free Space: Optimized the free space wiping algorithm, increasing speed by 8%. Minor GUI improvements. Minor bug fixes. Download: Glary Utilities 6.43.0.47 | 27.0 MB (Freeware) Download: Portable Glary Utilities | 32.3 MB View: Glary Utilities Homepage | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin bypasses, Microsoft Edge, Opera to follow

      By +Edouard · Posted

      "Of course the easiest solution is to switch to uBlock Origin Lite if you want to remain on Chrome, as it is MV3-based, but from our experience, uBO Lite does not seem to be as good as the original non-Lite version" In my experience uBlock Origin Lite does the job for normal everday home users. When they kill that we get to watch Firefox and Brave get a boost in user market share.
    • Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin bypasses, Microsoft Edge, Opera to follow

      By TheGhostPhantom · Posted

      Block by DNS ad blocker! I dare you! I will even layer unlock Origin, on top of my internal DNS, if I need to and I don’t even block ads today (I really should but this type of behavior makes me angry). I suppose I could also just be lazy, and add the flags myself, back to each release (it wouldn’t be that difficult).
    • UK nudity blockers are a looming privacy disaster, we must be able to see the source code

      By ExecutiveFunction404 · Posted

      Wonder what MPs have ties to these privacy/verification/data harvesting companies that are going to step in this time. Last time under the Tories half the cabinet had fingers in the pies, heck even the PM and his wife at the time was working for silicon valley, probably made a fortune.
    • Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin bypasses, Microsoft Edge, Opera to follow

      By hellowalkman · Posted

      Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin bypasses, Microsoft Edge, Opera to follow by Sayan Sen For a while now the transition away from Manifest V2 (MV2) to MV3 has been on-going and it looks like it is entering its final phase of deprecation, at least, in the case of Google Chrome. A recent discussion thread in the w3c WebExtensions Community Group GitHub repo has highlighted how the latest and upcoming versions of the most popular browser are expected to be its final releases with support for MV2 extensions. Chromium contributor Andrey Bershanskiy shared details about recent Chromium changes and according to comments from Google engineer Devlin Cronin, Chrome has now started removing the flags that previously controlled MV2 availability. kExtensionManifestV2Disabled, the Chromium feature flag that allowed controlled disabling of MV2 add-ons, is now completely removed, which means you will likely no longer find uBlock Origin in your browser extensions list. He wrote: "The kExtensionManifestV2Disabled feature has been default-enabled for over a year. Remove the feature and the effectively-dead code. ... Any tests that relied on being in the "warning" phase (i.e., with the kExtensionManifestV2Disabled) for their sole behavior testing are removed, since this stage is no longer reachable." Cronin further explained why MV2 extensions are no longer allowed in supported Chrome versions as maintaining the associated functionality indefinitely is no longer possible. He cited growing technical difficulties and implementation complexities as well as security concerns. He wrote: "MV2 extensions are no longer allowed in any supported version of Chrome, and we are removing support for them and the associated functionality. We won't be able to provide / maintain this functionality indefinitely due to the complexity and tech debt, as well as the security risks it entails (we've actually found a number of bugs that are specific to MV2 lately). Of course, other browsers can continue supporting these if they so desire. Unfortunately, we won't be putting code behind a compilation flag ... We won't be removing all the MV2 code wholesale right away, so many of these things will continue working for awhile (but they will go away eventually, and some may go away sooner than others)." What this essentially means is that the tricks and bypasses that were used to keep MV2 extensions like uBlock Origin and others alive will not work any more on Chrome, or at least not for very long. For example the Windows Registry mod that could extend MV2 availability will cease to function after Chromium version 151. Here is a rundown of the changes coming in the final such releases of Chromium releases: Chromium 150 lost ExtensionManifestV2Disabled option Chromium 151 will loose ExtensionManifestV2Unsupported option Chromium 151 will loose ExtensionManifestV2Availability option Chromium 151 will likely loose AllowLegacyMV2Extensions option Other Chromium-based browsers like Opera and Microsoft Edge could soon follow suit too. Although it is not specified, Edge began disabling uBlock Origin back in February, and Opera could also stop the functioning of MV2 add-ons, even though it had committed to support MV2 for longer in October 2024. uBlock Origin developer Raymond Hill (gorhill) apparently stated the following: "For Opera I did submit 1.70.0 rather late, but this was weeks ago. A while ago I received an email from Opera that they plan to abandon MV2-based extension so maybe they are no longer allocating resources for reviewing such extensions." The email which developers like Gorhill mentions was received from Opera last year. Here is what it seemingly said: Hence for now the only Chromium browser that seems to be on-board fully with MV2 support is Brave, and perhaps Vivaldi as well. Meanwhile if you want to ditch Chromium browsers entirely then Mozilla Firefox is an excellent alternative as MV3 and MV2 are both supported. Of course the easiest solution is to switch to uBlock Origin Lite if you want to remain on Chrome, as it is MV3-based, but from our experience, uBO Lite does not seem to be as good as the original non-Lite version. Source: w3C (GitHub repo) As an online publication, Neowin too relies on ads for operating costs and, if you use an ad blocker, we'd appreciate being whitelisted. In addition, we have an ad-free subscription for $28 a year, which is another way to show support!

  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      skylerssviv earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      mobmobiles earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Very Popular
      Captain_Eric earned a badge
      Very Popular
    • One Month Later
      amusc earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      DJC50PLUS earned a badge
      One Month Later

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      501
    2. 2
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      217
    3. 3
      ATLien_0
      92
    4. 4
      +Edouard
      90
    5. 5
      Steven P.
      82
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!