Patrick's Rants

I just got my 1400+ page copy of Windows Server 2008 Inside Out. Even this book can’t help me. Windows Vista, Server 2008 and the upcoming Tupperware version, Windows 7 all have UAC. Now, UAC is supposed to prevent programs from just running and installing malware or tweak the registry and is supposed make your computer safer.

The truth is that it normally just annoys the users.

At the tax office I am in the process of migrating from a Windows 2003 server to Windows 2008 (with 64bit) server. I have had a few stumbling blocks, but yesterday I managed to finalize installation of seven years worth of tax software. Out of all of the years the 2006 and 2007 versions have the stupid “protection shield” on the desktop icon meaning the user has to enter and administrator password every single time they run the program. What exactly is the point of having regular user accounts if they have to know an administrator password to use the software installed on their computer?

There are three options for UAC.

1. I can turn it off completely – defeating the purpose of UAC.
2. I can give the regular user the Administrator password – defeating the purpose of Administrator accounts vs. user accounts.
3. I can set all users as Administrators – defeating the purpose of Administrator accounts vs. user accounts.

There is no option to save the Administrator password for a specific program so that next time the user uses the program it won’t prompt for the password. There is an option to Run as Administrator and to set that for all users… but it’s not checked so why is it prompting like it is checked? There is also a program that I found that will allow me to set UAC for individual programs… but from what I’ve read it’s bloated and for one feature it’s not something that I want to install.

So all of the users are now in the Administrators group because MS didn’t provide a way to override UAC on a per program basis.