IT Professionals

My Top 10 Vista Annoyances Part III

Posted by on Oct 17, 2007 | 3 Comments

You should now be familiar with five of my top 10 Vista Annoyances. I’m not done yet – another five to go.

6. Where are my Display Settings?
Why change something for the sake of change? That was my thought when I went to change my display settings for the first time in Vista. It used to be that changing display settings was as simple as a right click on the desktop.

There is now an added level of complexity. You still right click on the desktop but when you select Personalize, a new window appears with a slew of Appearance and Personalization options. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the window and you will find the Display Settings option.

As you start using Vista, you will see that this is not the only instance where it seems there are unnecessary changes making things more complicated.

7. Vista Needs my Permission – For Everything
The one new feature that most people grumble about is User Account Control or UAC. Each time you attempt to perform a task that requires administrative rights, a window pops up prompting you for permission to continue with the task. In other words, you tell Vista you want to perform a task, but it needs to ask for your permission before doing so. Although the intention of it is good – it prevents unauthorized or unintentional changes to your computer, the window that continuously pops up is annoying.

If you can live with the constant prompting for permission, hats off to you. Otherwise, you can eliminate this annoyance by disabling UAC through User Accounts and Family Safety within the Control Panel.

[tags]vista, windows, vista problems[/tags]

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/hazymorning/ hazymorning

    First I’d like to introduce myself. Hello, I’m chuck – a.k.a HazyMorning.

    My views on Vista are opposite of your opinions. However you have many excellent points. Soon, I’ll be writing a blog on Vista myself.

    The main reason for my comment isn’t to discredit you in any way, your points are on the money with a lot of people.

    I simply would like to offer an alternative to turning off the U.A.C.. Turning off the U.A.C. is not a good idea because it also turns off many security features in Internet Explorer. An alternative would be to enable the “secret” administrator account in Vista. By doing so, you no longer have to be burden by the U.A.C., it’s not present in this account. However, it is also less secure if you did not use security measures to prevent outside user’s from accessing the account.

    If you or anyone else would like to know how to enable this administrator account, I would be happy to help. It’ll also be in my blog when I post it.

    Also, I am patiently waiting for your fourth installment. It has been a very interesting series.

  • http://www.Hogans-Systems.com Rick Hogan

    I just have to wonder what people are doing with their computers when they say that they are annoyed by seeing the UAC prompt so often. Do you just spend your whole day adjusting settings, editing your registry, or doing similar administrative activities? It seems like I hardly ever see the UAC prompts myself, and when I do see it, I like knowing that Windows is actually watching out for itself and making sure things don’t screwed with when I don’t want them getting screwed with.

    Rick

  • Gary

    Hi hazymorning,

    Need your advise as I had faced some problems with the Family Safety Service thingy.

    Me as the sole user & administrator, whenever i start my PC (vista), it prompted ‘The Family Safety Service has been disabled. Please ask the administrator for this computer to enable it. Until that’s done, you will not be able to browse the internet.’

    I, using the administrator account, tried but unable to er-enable the family safety service. Basically, no option for me to re-enable.

    Appreciate you can direct your advise to my email account, so2cvb@yahoo.com.sg

    Thanks!
    Gary