Vista and the UAC

[NeptuneUK]

F*ck you UAC!
YES I want to run steam.exe, I JUST F*CKING CLICKED ON IT!!!!!
All you do is piss users off while doing jack shit to protect us.
Unless your computer is already infected it doesn't help in any way, and even then all it does is pop up when something changes but by then we have all stopped giving a **** and press allow to everything that appears, hence rendering its whole purpose obsolete!

http://www.tweak-uac.com/am-i-at-risk-if-i-disable-uac/

 

[PimpinPenguin]

UAC doesn't ask me permission to run Steam.
Actually since SP1 it hardly asks me to confirm stuff anymore. I find it quite useful now, as i can go for long sessions on my PC without UAC bothering me once, not something i could do pre-SP1.
Just out of curiosity are run running Steam in administrator mode? because according to Valve you shouldn't. And it would explain why UAC is bothering you.

 

[NeptuneUK]

UAC doesn't ask me permission to run Steam.

Just out of curiosity are run running Steam in administrator mode? because according to Valve you shouldn't. And it would explain why UAC is bothering you.

I thought the same thing!
I have just returned to my beloved desktop after leaving it with my younger brother for a weekend so I really don't know lol!!!

UAC bothers me whenever it pops up. I shouldn't have to confirm my own actions, and the steam thing? It was just a random example I witnessed earlier on today. I forgot about how annoying it was after using my laptop for several days (without UAC)
And I guess since I was doing a hell of a lot of administrative tasks today while cleaning up my PC, it appeared many times more often than on an average use.

 

[PimpinPenguin]

Thankfully the default option on Windows 7 will stop UAC asking you to confirm your own actions.

 

[xcellerate]

I ****ing hate the "you cannot __________ to this file because it is already in use by another program."

Okay, that's fine, so WHAT ****ING PROGRAM/SERVICE IS USING IT?! At least give me the god damn option to BREAK that connection. If I want to ****ing delete this file then you better do WHATEVER IT TAKES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Or if you're using solver in excel and it says some formula violates the rules of 'linear programming'. WHAT ****ING CELL?!?! You obviously scanned my worksheet and found a problem, so how about instead of telling me there's an issue YOU ****ING TELL ME EXACTLY WHERE YOU RAN INTO A PROBLEM!!!!

 

[NeptuneUK]

I ****ing hate the "you cannot __________ to this file because it is already in use by another program."

Okay, that's fine, so WHAT ****ING PROGRAM/SERVICE IS USING IT?! At least give me the god damn option to BREAK that connection. If I want to ****ing delete this file then you better do WHATEVER IT TAKES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Or if you're using solver in excel and it says some formula violates the rules of 'linear programming'. WHAT ****ING CELL?!?! You obviously scanned my worksheet and found a problem, so how about instead of telling me there's an issue YOU ****ING TELL ME EXACTLY WHERE YOU RAN INTO A PROBLEM!!!!

It's funny because it's true.

 

[PimpinPenguin]

I ****ing hate the "you cannot __________ to this file because it is already in use by another program."

Okay, that's fine, so WHAT ****ING PROGRAM/SERVICE IS USING IT?! At least give me the god damn option to BREAK that connection. If I want to ****ing delete this file then you better do WHATEVER IT TAKES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Oh god, how i hate it when that happens. The sad thing is they actually implemented that in the very early Beta versions of Vista and then scrapped it for some weird reason

 

[PvtRyan]

F*ck you UAC!
YES I want to run steam.exe, I JUST F*CKING CLICKED ON IT!!!!!
All you do is piss users off while doing jack shit to protect us.
Unless your computer is already infected it doesn't help in any way, and even then all it does is pop up when something changes but by then we have all stopped giving a **** and press allow to everything that appears, hence rendering its whole purpose obsolete!

http://www.tweak-uac.com/am-i-at-risk-if-i-disable-uac/

It pops up before a change is made. And yeah, even if you click something, it's still totally valid that UAC wants to confirm that you really did run this program that wants elevated privileges, because it's child's play to simulate a mouse click or keyboard input and that is totally indistinguishable from the real thing for the system.

That it pops up for Steam for you, is a sign that you're doing something wrong. I've never seen that.

The purpose of UAC was to make developers more conscious about what security privileges their programs require. For years and years, Windows programs were written with the assumption that you were an admin and indeed, many programs are unusable if you're not. With UAC, you can still easily run programs that demand elevated rights as a normal user, without the security risks, you just get a pop-up. Of course, it can make some programs be unbearable to use, that demand elevated privileges for everything, or that try to do silly stuff like saving in Program Files. That is because those programs are poorly programmed. UAC is an extra incentive for developers to be mindful of how they make their programs, because poor programs will be annoying as fuck with UAC on.

UAC attempts to fix what has been wrong for years and there is some pain with this, but you can already see that it was much worse in Vista's early days. Many programs have already adapted to it. So it's working. I'm sad to see that Windows 7 still makes the first user an administrator though, the one you make at setup should be a normal user with an administrator user being made for you automatically. Or perhaps you should just not be allowed to log in as administrator, but just get a temporary session of admin rights (su/sudo basically), but this would probably break a lot of legacy stuff in Windows.

Or people should just wise up and shake their old habits, and hopefully UAC pushes them in that direction. You're doing it wrong too though, if you just have to click the UAC message, you're an admin. A normal user has to input the admin's password. But if you're logged in as admin, you lose all complain rights about security in my eyes anyhow.

Sometimes it's a bit ridiculous that you need to input the administrator's password to change the time settings or open the performance monitor, but the decision to do that is perfectly valid: they are operations that require elevated privileges and to just ignore that would be arbitrary and inconsistent from Microsoft's part and a potential future security exploit. Luckily, this sort of stuff can be used defined in Windows 7.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

UAC can burn.

 

[AtomicSpark]

PolicyKit > UAC

 

[DEATH eVADER]

UAC was the most pointless tool created ever....

....thankfully you can disable the mother!

 

[bigburpco]

I ****ing hate the "you cannot __________ to this file because it is already in use by another program."

Okay, that's fine, so WHAT ****ING PROGRAM/SERVICE IS USING IT?! At least give me the god damn option to BREAK that connection. If I want to ****ing delete this file then you better do WHATEVER IT TAKES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Or if you're using solver in excel and it says some formula violates the rules of 'linear programming'. WHAT ****ING CELL?!?! You obviously scanned my worksheet and found a problem, so how about instead of telling me there's an issue YOU ****ING TELL ME EXACTLY WHERE YOU RAN INTO A PROBLEM!!!!

Have you heard of Unlocker? It's pretty useful.

 

[VirusType2]

I ****ing hate the "you cannot __________ to this file because it is already in use by another program."

Okay, that's fine, so WHAT ****ING PROGRAM/SERVICE IS USING IT?! At least give me the god damn option to BREAK that connection. If I want to ****ing delete this file then you better do WHATEVER IT TAKES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.

I figured this one out a few days ago:

1) open task manager CTRL ALT DELETE, and click the Processes tab
2) End Task explorer.exe
3) Again in Task Manager: File > New Task (Run...) explorer.exe

Now the program is no longer in use.


Explorer just has some issue where it won't let go sometimes

if it still won't work, then the file is damaged, or some other problem like malware, permissions, or damaged sector on your drive... I guess.