Is The UAC For Windows That Bad?
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Lately it seems like most of the frustration over the Windows UAC has all but vanished. That then changed once I came across this recent article from Ars. Apparently, there is a call for the UAC to simply be removed from Windows all together, even in Windows 7.
Now, considering the fact that Windows to this day runs everyone as administrators, this seems really dangerous. While there are always going to be exploits that can overcome the UAC itself, at least it provides some thin level of protection at some level, right? Okay, maybe not. But I am trying not to be too hard on the idea of the UAC itself. After all, I guess it is better than nothing.
Speaking as someone who dealing with pseudo user prompts when trying to access administrator tasks on his Linux system, I do not mind being “bothered” from time to time, so long as I not dealing with the prompt for basic application use. If the UAC is going to be a problem for simply running applications on Windows however, I think I can understand the frustration.
It seems the biggest complaint stems from what some deem as a lack of consistent behavior. To be honest, I really fail to see the big deal? Then again, I would be more concerned about the UAC being spoofed or exploited, but that is just me.
4 Comments
leftystrat
March 5th, 2009
at 9:50pm
It figures.
Much as I hate agreeing with Microsoft on anything, I think they have a huge problem on their hands.
I would argue that the UAC is desperately needed, in some form, in Windows. I created my own UAC in XP by using chatty firewalls.
The problem is that I can say yes or no with authority; most users can’t and will simply allow or deny everything because they can’t be bothered to think or educate themselves.
It’s time to dreamily come out of your slumber, oh Great Unwashed. Computer operation just isn’t as brain-dead as you yet so adjust accordingly.
If not, stop bitching when you pick up a few choice viruses.
John C
March 6th, 2009
at 11:04am
It’s true that for most people UAC (in Vista at least) is more of an annoyance than anything else, and there are tools that minimise the impact by “turning down” (not off) the frequency of alerts, but for some of us (developers) it really *is* necessary to turn UAC off completely.
Why?
Because it’s simply not compatible with tools such as Visual Studio 2005! After months of battling problems with access control (and I need to run as administrator just to be able to debug properly with VS2005 under Vista - Enterprise, 64bit), reading posts from others (some going back 2 years) detailing *exactly* the same problems, and yet having bug reports repeatedly closed as “unable to reproduce” by Microsoft (via connect.microsoft.com), I was left with no other option than to completely disable UAC.
And what a *huge* difference it made! Suddenly my machine simply worked! No more problems with processes “disappearing” (processes launched as admin, not visible to an ordinary user and vice versa), no need to map shared drives *twice* (to be accessible from an admin started app and an ordinary user started app), no more … well never mind, you get the message :-)
Regular users probably shouldn’t turn off UAC (but I strongly recommend turning down the prompts with TweakUAC), but for developers… if you want to keep your sanity (and your hair!), turn it off. Now.
Ron
March 7th, 2009
at 3:49am
Windows 7 at least allows the user to turn off UAC. One step that would make UAC much more reasonable would be repeat program recognition. There are programs that are older or developed by small scale operations that don’t have the means to dig into Windows or to pay for program signing that are perfectly safe. If I could tell UAC that a program I wanted to install is OK, it should remember that I’ve indicated that this is a safe program.
I realize the conundrum is not just with Windows/Microsoft/UAC. A major part of political debate is whether we need to be protected from our own stupidity and just who is responsible for my irresponsible behaviour - (e.g. the pub owner is guilty of a crime if a patron gets drunk, drives and injures someone).
For me (as a small developer) I agree with John C. - I have to turn it off.
Ryk
March 10th, 2009
at 11:40am
Just last week I read a good article about this subject in eWEEK magazine. http://eweekdigital.eweek.com/publicatio… not sure whether everyone can get to it…) Andrew Garcia wrote it and makes some of the same points that Matt does. Think about it — notwithstanding the odd circumstance like John C. reports above, a user complaining about the hassle of getting a UAC prompt is sort of like my mother complaining that putting on her seatbelt is too much of a hassle when getting in the car. Sooner or later, you’ll crash & be worse off without it.