Vista Administrator Rights

[rjsunthar]

I've installed Vista Business on my computer for some time now, and I've been meaning to address this issue: some of my programs (i.e. Solidworks) require me to run as administrator...but I am the administrator. I've right clicked on the program icon, and set it to run as administrator, but I still run into the same program.

Anyone know how to fix this?

Thanks,
Joe

[Wiz]

So what problem do you run into, does the application fail to start with an error message or is there som functions that doesn't work?

What version do you use and is the OS Vista supported for that version?

[DirkM]

What you are seeing is User Account Control (UAC), a new feature in Vista.

[jdhurst]

What you are seeing is User Account Control (UAC), a new feature in Vista.

I turned UAC off for good. It turns out to be one of the worst Vista features, and by Microsoft's own admission on numerous occasions, was designed to be in your face, and nothing more. Gone. ... JDH

[neenee]

Indeed there are various programs, most of them old ones, which are not yet fully compatible with Vista.

Turning off UAC however, should only be considered as a temporary workaround, until the software you need to use has been updated and/or fixed, so as Wiz suggests, check your version and also check the manufacturer's site, to see if there is any newer version you can upgrade to.

Good luck

[mR_PiNk]

I don't agree with you. In my opinion is UAC one of the most important additions which is long overdue. It can't be true, that you have admin rights all the time during normal computer usage. Why the hell do you need admin rights when you are writing a word doc for example? So, I think it's an important feature. And it didn't cause any trouble for my part. However, if there is a problem, I'm sure there is a workaround.

[msb0b]

I agree that Vista's UAC is a step in the right direction in terms of computer security. The Windows world has been running with full privileges for too long. Ever since DOS days if you want to keep count. The programmers got sloppy over the time and used privileged function calls or stored temp files in system directories. Since everyone had administrator privileges, no one noticed.

Then comes Vista with improved security model, but the legacy applications would misbehave unless executed at elevated privilege levels. Vista gets blamed for programs' poor security and incompatibility.

If you look at Mac OS and certain distributions of Linux, they also prompt the user when elevated privileges are needed. Why is only UAC being vilified? Competitor (Apple) marketing.

[Wiz]

I have to agree that UAC is annoying and turned it off as well. I guess it depend how you use the computer. For a lot of people maybe they don't see the UAC popup a lot, but i see it all the time and find it annoying. It should be possible to choose "Always allow" for certain operations and then i would consider to leave it on.

[neenee]

I think it's more a matter of whether a user wants to sacrifice security for the sake of ease of use.

To me, it's like living in a house with kids, but leaving the medicine cabinet unlocked because you need to get something from it regularly. Because the cabinet is quite high up the wall, your kids may not get something harmful from it for a long while, but they might get creative someday.

People are not infallible and even the most experienced admin may accidentally allow a malicious program to run, something which UAC may have prevented.

Also, I think many users are still using Vista as if it's XP - disabling a lot of features, services and more, for the sake of 'tweaking', while not seeing that Vista has very sensible defaults.

To each their own though

[wswartzendruber]

I have my UAC set to prompt for my password. Just my personal preference, though.