Vista UAC getting on my nerves

As of late, the latest Toshiba Driver/Software have been giving UAC warnings on startup.

The latest TEMPRO V2.0 and now the latest Conextant Audio software/drivers are giving me a warning on startup, see picture below.

I dont know why, maybe they are not signed for vista or something, I have tried unticking the box, but i still get asked at every startup.

 

I always disable vista uac when i install it.

 

Start - Run - type MSCONFIG - StartUp and untick it over there.

Done.

 

I'd be willing to bet you are dealing with a "streams" issue. Bear with me for a moment.

With Vista when a file is downloaded from the internet and save to an NTFS partition a "stream" is added to the file to indicate that the file came from a source that MIGHT not be safe. And even if you untick the checkbox you did, Vista still thinks it MIGHT be unsafe because of the stream added.

See this link for an example:
http://www.akaplan.com/blog/?p=193
or this one:
http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=9405

But, fear not, our good friends at Sysinternals have a little tool that will let you examine and remove this stream. Check it out here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897440.aspx

I have used this numerous times to great effect.

Gary

 

A colossally BAD idea. You are removing a very important level of security by doing so. Despite the UAC prompts you are also disabling a security level in IE as well.

Gary

 

What will that do? He wants the app to run, he just doesn't want the security alert to pop up each time. Your suggestion, if I understand what you are trying to tell him to do, will disable the program from running.

Gary

 

This isn't UAC at all. If you turn off UAC, I think you'll still get that warning.

This is that Windows knows the file was downloaded from the internet and doesn't consider it safe.

If you want to stop this warning, you need to go to the directory where the file is and right-click the file > Properties > Unblock. Only problem is, here UAC will get in the way. It'll appear to work, but it probably won't due to directory permissions. (I can't believe MS still hasn't fixed this.)

As a workaround, drag the file to a directory where you have permissions (such as your home dir or the desktop), and then do right-click > Properties > Unblock over there. Then drag the file back to its original location.

 

That worked with both my problems , it`s thing`s like this that make people dislike Vista

Thanks a Million

+REP

 

Good advice swarmer!

The first thing I do when I install Vista is disable UAC.

As far as any IE problems I wouldn't know because I don't use IE.

Firefox assists with warnings of websites that are reported attack sites.

I scan all of my downloads and mail with AVG. I also use spybot search and destroy for further protection.

I've turned off all microsoft updates as I prefer to check for critical updates myself every couple of days.

I have downloaded files that contained viruses or other malicious software. With AVG, I was made aware of this so I didn't open the questionable file.

I've used Vista with UAC disabled on numerous computers in the last year and a half and have yet to become infected with anything.

IMO, I thing UAC is more suited to the casual computer user. More advanced users are better able to keep their rigs free of problems.

 

Just to clarify, I didn't advise anyone to disable UAC. I leave it turned on on my machine.

I was just saying... I don't think the OP's problem is related to UAC.

I was also saying that I think Explorer's "Unblock" functionality is broken for cases where both UAC is on and the file is in a directory where you don't have write/modify permissions. (You should get a UAC prompt, but you don't... it just doesn't do anything in my experience.) Until Microsoft addresses that issue, I've provided a fairly simple workaround.

I think Gary's method using the streams utility is just another way of doing the same thing...so that's another workaround that's available.

I've never had any problem with Windows Update, so I leave it on automatic.

Even advanced users are susceptible to exploits (buffer-overflow etc.) and running your programs with reduced privileges can help contain the damage.

But... I didn't want to turn this thread into a big UAC debate... there have been plenty of those threads here already.

 

If you think UAC is for "casual users", why do you think that all Linux and Unix operating systems use a feature similar to UAC and have done so from the beginning of their existence? How many "causal users" use Unix? For years all Windows operating systems when installed defaulted to the user having full admin rights. That meant everything running while the user was logged in had those rights. That was STUPID. Microsoft knew it was STUPID, even suggesting that users create a different user id to login. A user id that did NOT have full admin rights. But no one did and application programmers became LAZY assuming that at install time the user would have full admin rights and put things into places that ONLY admins should ever have access to. People beat up Microsoft at every opportunity in the professional press for this default install behavior. Unix and Linux folks had a field day, poking fun at Windows for this stupidity. So in Vista, Microsoft did the right thing. It made the default rights non-admin. The only time UAC pops up is when access is required to areas of the machine that ought to be secure. Unlike Unix or Linux it does not require you to give an admin password to grant access. (Although you CAN configure it that way if you want. And many corporations DO that.) The biggest headache with UAC is for applications created by that cadre of LAZY programmers who still assume that the user has full ADMIN rights, and still try to access areas of the machine that they should never have done in the first place.

And just because you have never been infected makes it a good idea to disable a level of security? Do you keep all the locks on your windows at home unlocked, just because no one has ever tried to climb in one? I use AVG as well and trust it, but did you ever hear of "zero day" exploits? No amount of antivirus, anti spyware or firewall can fully protect you, even if you are careful. A layered defense is your best bet. UAC is one of those layers.

Gary

 

What you are seeing isn't UAC (as has been said), and Windows is not the only OS to be cautious of files ran from the internet. The only difference here is for some reason the file never got flagged as "safe".

 

Should I call you master Gary?

 

Some grasshoppers should...

 

Hey relax guys.

Like you I am only giving an opinion based on what has worked very well for me.

One size doesn't fit all.

And yes ScuderiaConchiglia, I do leave my windows and doors unlocked. I don't even know if I have keys to the house. I go on vacation that way too. Where I live it's not necessary to batten down the hatches. I couldn't, in good conscious, raise my family in a place where that would be a concern.

If a "zero day exploit" were to become a problem I'll just use my back up (Acronis) And make everything perfect again. I would rather not deal with the annoyance of UAC on a daily basis. If once in a blue moon I actually have to install a back-up, then so be it. For me it's still much less hassle which hasn't even happened yet.

I update AVG and SB every day and every couple of days I check for critical updates at a time of my choosing. I back-up everything using Acronis on a regular basis as well which is prudent for software and hardware problems.

Smooth sailing!:yes:

EDIT: swarmer, I gave you +rep because you helped solve a problem. After that I was just sharing what has served me well. I wasn't trying toimply you agreed with turning UAC off.

 

Unfortunately that your advice isn't based on best security practice.

 

My god! How did we ever function before UAC saved the world!

 

ok, that's cool... I wasn't sure how to interpret what you wrote... anyway, thanks for the rep.

btw, I should mention... next time, to avoid the blocked file problem entirely... when you download a driver or something, unblock the file (right-click > Properties > Unblock) first before installing it. (This generally isn't needed with self-extracting .exe installers though.) If it's a .zip, unblock the .zip file before extracting it. This will make the extracted files also be unblocked, so then you won't get the popup window on startup.

 

That's good to know about the downloaded zip files.

 

Very good info about the unblock, better to do individual zip files then whole hdd`s or directory's.

 

I always turn off UAC first thing when I do a clean Vista install too. I also frequently don't have a virus scan running. Or a firewall. Safe computing is 99% not making poor decisions about websites/e-mails/network sharing. With default installation, UAC pops up EVERY TIME a program tries to access the internet and/or install or when you try to change settings. It slowed down my productivity, and did nothing at all to make my computer "safer" during the time I had it running (it never stopped anything that I didn't WANT to happen).

 

Who uses IE lol

Turning off UAC is fine if your a person that knows what they are doing on a computer, UAC prompts come up so often the one time something does pop up to warn you of a real virus or threat your going to click "ok" just out of muscle memory anyways.

 

Just keep telling yourself that. ...shakes head...

Gary

 

it doesn't come up often if you do your stuff right. but we've beaten that to death before.

don't disable it, just as you don't drive without seatbelt. except if your stupid.


but yeah, the whole topic wasn't about uac at all anyways

tipps to detect uac: a half-transparent black fullscreen thingy blocks any contact to your ordinary os. and the actual window will never have aero on, as it's in a different, save, desktop environment. there, even aero doesn't exist. reason for this (for some, weird) behaviour: that dialog that pops up can not be clicked by anyone else but you. no virus, no (ordinary) remote desktop, etc.

 

So often? I rarely see a UAC prompt. And then it is ONLY when something I am doing is attempting to access system areas of my machine. It comes up quite a bit when first getting a machine set up, but after that, unless you have some poorly written program(s), it should not come up very often at all.

Gary

 

QFT, lol. I was always a Vista defender in general, but I never realized so many people were fans of UAC.

 

Maybe Windows 7 will make people happier:
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/05/update-on-uac.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/05/uac-feedback-and-follow-up.aspx
I think it's a good idea, like linux/unix, but it is a bit overkill so people get used to just hitting OK. Reduce the number of UAC popups = more useful UAC, IMHO.
Also, since no one has mentioned it yet, TweakUAC. Did you know you can put UAC in quiet mode?

 

^^^ Better than I could have ever said it. In my many years dealing with Windows OS's starting with 3.1, I have only had a few notified viruses that a free virus checker has found and dealt with fine, and never had a hacker, because, well, there's really no reason for a hacker to get on my machine. They'll be quite bored if they do. UAC has its place, but it isn't necessarily for everyone. +1

LOL! Thanks for that!

Exactly. After doing several Vista installs, UAC is an annoyance when installing drivers, updates, etc. I disable when installing all my virus/worm/spam/spork/malware-free drivers, and before I even connect to the net.

I, too, even just click ok without reading after going through a couple dozen drivers and updates.

 

I just put Vista on my mother's computer. She barely knows how to turn it on.

Needless to say, I set her computer to have UAC on and critical updates set to automatic.

I also have her copy of AVG set to do everything automatically.

For her having UAC would be like driving without a seatbelt.

On my rigs however, I am far more powerful than the UAC "seatbelt".

 

+1, I disable it before I install my drivers

And (bit off tropic but) What does TEMPRO "do" as driver, I have in not installed

 

i find it funny how people can find it that annoying. it pops up once per driver, once per app. which means during the first days you get some. afterwards, never again.

all the ones that disable it are just ridiculous "i know better" geeks, that, in fact, don't.

it gives you a more ease life on your system as you don't have to "know what i'm doing", as long as no uac pops up, you don't hurt your system. very simple, very powerful.

you're just oldschool. better go back to dos, then, there you know what your system does 100%.

i had a virus only once in my life so far. it's not like i don't know how to handle a system. still, UAC is not annoying at all, pops up close to never, and gives some savety that xp never could give me: the savety that I DON'T F*** UP MY SYSTEM.

if you like to **** up your system, do. but don't tell people that's a good thing. anyways, this is getting ridiculous. uac is a great thing, and people that don't understand that have very little knowledge about computers. they don't know how it works, why it works, and why it's important to be that way.
they don't deserve uac and it's gains. the only thing that's sad is, not much disable it, so it isn't worth to exploit that fact. would be fun to see a virus that would only kill systems with uac disabled. would make quite some people silent in this forum sadly, even those get the additional savety that uac is on by default: virus producers only target default system configs as they are 99% of the userbase..

 

Hehe, i love all the facts im finding here.

And to think, i dont have win defender on, windows firewall on, uac on, no firewalls or spyware at all.

I install the programs i need to maintain my lappy on a monthly basis hehe.
Never had any virus's yet .

 

well, my config:
defender off, uac on, firewall on.

they don't, ever, annoy you or dissallow you to do anything you want. i don't trust foreign programs to handle my stuff better. (i do suggest avast antivirus for other people, it works quite well).

the reason you can disable your firewall at home is, because you're behind your router, which acts as a firewall, too. but the moment you one day are directly online without some NAT between, you'll get hurt by not having a firewall. a firewall NEVER gets in the way. never ever. still, it helps much.

btw, i don't do any maintenance on my systems, not daily, not monthly. so i'm even more cool than you not needing any maintenance == WIN.

 

Haha, untill you find your registrys cluttered and your pc speed degraded, then we will see who wins xD, i also turn off all router firewall features and have all ports opened to my pc for server hosting when it comes to router

Maybe a monthly maintenance is good

 

Hello,



Instead of disabling UAC altogether, I set it to Quiet Mode using the standalone utlity TweakUAC.

In quiet mode, UAC is still turned on, but the annoying elevation prompts are disabled. This is better than turning UAC off completely, because programs will still run with standard user privileges instead of in superuser mode - which has been one of the most significant security issues in past Windows operating systems.

The same UAC settings (and a few more) can be changed in the Local Security Policy settings (secpol.msc) in Business, Enterprise and Ultimate editions.

 

uhm, i have vista, that doesn't "degrade" in any form actually. yes, since over two years, no with no reinstalls except on hdd switching.

montly maintenance is old school. if you have a modern system, and modern software, and a knowledge of how the modern stuff works, you don't need to fiddle anymore.

 

jup, better than nothing. still worse than the "annoying elevation prompt" (which are not often and not annoying at all. that just is a hyped thing that they are annoying. they are something new "omg we just have to hate it ").

problem with your case is, a virus can come on your system without administrator rights, and just elevate without you noticing. and bam, he can do what ever he wants (including completely disabling uac).

the "annoying elevation prompt" is the only technical way a virus can not click on the prompt "for you" to gain administrative rights.

and if it pops up often for some old application you use, maybe the link in my signature helps...

 

Not really, on lower end pc's with vista, start up times let alone speed can really go down the drain, ive had a system from 5 minutes start up back down to 50 or so because of a monthly clean.

I dont really fiddle with defrags though.

My biggest debate is running av/fw software due to performace loss as things run silently in the background, im guessing it wouldn't really affect 64bit systems?

 

i don't run such software due to performance loss as well.

but my vista boots in around 30sec since it's installation day (depends on the system). may be the ssd no need for a cleanup.

btw you forgot to write "seconds". else it's from 5min down to 50min

64bit systems are the same as 32bit systems. no difference there.

 

Well the ram utilisation, more specifically while gaming, 2 gb for a game (reccomended in most cases) 1gb for the OS and 1gb or so for others like firewall prehaps?

Hahah didnt notice that dave xD 50mins would be fatal!

It takes 25 seconds for vista to load to login screen and 3 seconds to load all processes on this machine, so its very nice.

I dont really feal unsafe when using computers thats why i dont run firewalls and stuff, but then again, there could be a day that comes where im in the middle of a mess, so im just sorta debaiting.

People say readyboost can work nicely in some cases but im not to sure about this either.

But cant go too off topic, UAC is a handy feature but the amount of popups it brings during setup launches etc is quite uncomfortable.

 

a firewall uses no ram, no cpu, nothing at all. it just changes network connection behaviour by doing a simple check if exe-name or port-number is okay or not, and then flips out.

enabling the firewall is only gain.

well, the amount of popups during setups: one. terrible

i was talking about differences for a 64bit os for safety (if a 64bit os means you can chance some security settings), there is no difference there.

and for ram usage, no not really much difference. 64bit allows more ram to be used, but vista uses much in both cases (but i'm happy that it does, xp never knew what to do with the ram, wich isn't better at all ).

as said before, just let vista be in it's default configuration, that works great.

 

LMAO!

1. Never again? Yeah, that's assuming everyone is like you maybe. I am constantly installing new apps and software. I enjoy tinkering with my OS and apps. So the UAC annoyance would never end.

2. Now your second statement wasn't very smart at all. Myself and many millions of others with a very high level knowledge of computers and their OS's have turned UAC off. And it's because of this knowledge and experience that we can safely do this.

3. They don't deserve UAC? You're right about that. That's why MS has made major changes to the way UAC bothers people in Windows 7. They finally realized nobody deserves to be pestered so much that they don't even look at what they are clicking on.

It's amazing how UAC is perceived by so many as an essential component to their OS. It's a good thing you didn't realize you needed it so much before Vista came out. Your whole OS may have evaporated at the moment of that realization.

 

1) i said once per installing / uninstalling an app. never while using it. that's why i said "NEVER AGAIN". i install an app: uac prompt. i use the app, NO UAC PROMPT EVER. i remove it again, uac prompt.

during usage of an application, i see NO uac prompts.

and i do quite some software installations and removals on my systems. but compared to the amount of "next, next, continue, finish" i have to click, the one uac prompt is actually not the main annoyance

2) well, if you think you're so smart.. then maybe you should know better? as many of the very smart guys do? including me *smiling with a big fat smile* no, seriously. most smart guys aren't that smart as they think when they "do it their own way". relearning stuff is important. most people forgot that during the years we only had xp. they started to believe that "the way they do will be the only real way for till-the-sun-explodes". just like all the smartest business guys knew that there won't ever be a collapse of the economy

3) in win7, microsoft does stuff the ballmer way. if you think that's intelligent, then do so and watch the "developers, developers, developers dance on youtube" while doing so

changing stuff is good, changing uac a bit is good, too. no problems here. but they made the default settings unsave. a virus CAN get admin rights on win7 by clicking the prompt itself last i checked (haven't played with the RC1 yet). and once that get spread as the main os everywhere, people WILL exploit that. i hope not..

4) uac is a needed thing in the windows environment. that's why the way uac works got emulated for years on 2000 and xp by taking away admin rights completely in companies.
just because we didn't have it before doesn't mean it isn't a GOOD THING TO HAVE IT FINALLY RIGHT NOW. it's called PROGRESS.


you're just boring. if you want, meet up with me, and i can explain you the technical reasons how uac works and why uac really IS important.

 

Well, vista vista...

...and the issues.

 

BULL S***! That is 100% totally false.

Gary

 

I bet you keep all of your windows and doors unlocked on your house too. Keeping ALL ports open on a router or firewall rather than the ones you need is a stupid, LAZY way to configre a network.

Gary

 

(I ran outa port slots) lol!

And i love the all ports to ip feature, its pretty sick in my oppinion, my windows and doores are pretty much always locked?

And to be honest the last 5 years pc's have been running fluent in my house except the recent strangeness of a laptop that im yet to figure out.

Although there is a huge risk with the internet and security, if you play your hands right and manage your pc's properly, you wont have any problems, at all.

 

No, it is because of this knowledge and experience tha you can DELUDE yourself into thinking it is safe. I have over 40 years of knowledge and experience. I have written development language compilers, parts of operating systems and a host of other sorts applications. I realize that this layer of defense provided by UAC is something that SHOULD have been in place long ago, and has been in place on every single version of Unix and its derivatives since day one. So don't tout your holier than thou "I am too smart to need such software" attitude as a badge of honor. It isn't.

No, they are changing it because the first version of UAC was designed to make a collective smack to the side of the head of application programmers who were doing things in user mode that required admin mode. Things that were NEVER supposed to be done that way from day one. Things specifically mentioned in every set of Windows development guidelines. Things ignore by legions of programmers, because they knew every user had admin rights. Now that Microsoft had their attention the way UAC is implemented can be changed.

What amazes me is how many folks like you, who claim to be so knowledgeable seem to think UAC is that little popup screen that warns you. It is a LOT more than just that. But hey, you know everything, why should I bother to tell you that. Right?

Gary

 

Yes no problems at all. Just keep telling yourself that. Nevermind, that "recent strangeness of a laptop that im yet to figure out".

Gary

 

Well now were here, prehaps you know of this problem?

I plug it in AC and it begins to freeze and mousepad begins to jolt, however when im on battery no problem at all.

Any idea's garry?