Using Vista? Quick Tip

Today’s Quick Tip is for those of you who have Vista, and would like to turn off that pesky pop-open prompt for “Continue?” (aka the “UAC”) yet still have the UAC protection.

It is a well-known ‘fact’ that neither the consumer, nor business, took to Microsoft’s Windows Vista. (In fact, it can be said that many, if not most, avoided Vista.) Microsoft learned from this ‘fact’ and made changes to it’s latest version of Windows – Windows 7 – which have proven to be the right moves.

One such change is the UAC in Windows 7 is much quieter, hardly ever popping open to ask you to ‘confirm’ your actions. Vista users can get this same “quiet mode” by downloading and using TweakUAC from WINABILTY. It is a free utility, which the developer says works on both 32 and 64 bit versions.

I have not mentioned Vista’s UAC here, as I did not want you, Dear Reader, turning it off. Yes. It’s annoying, but it is there to protect you. And you want it. Really. But “quiet mode” is fine with me, as it is the best of both worlds.. so to speak.
(So if you are one of those who did turn off the UAC.. may I suggest this approach instead?)

Note: one thing to be aware of: using this will make Vista think the UAC is off (which it isn’t) and it will give a ‘red shield’ Security Center warning. To stop the “red shield” icon from bothering you, right-click on the icon and choose “Open Security Center” from the menu. When it opens, click on the “Change the way Security Center alerts me” link, in the left panel. There choose one of the “Do not notify me” options.

Copyright 2007-2010 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

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Tell Vista you ARE an Administrator (repost)

This article — originally posted 9/14/07 — tells you how to overcome Vista “run permission denied” frustrations by elevating your user privellege. It is important to note that this can be done to every “executable” (program/application). I am reprinting it, with a different title, because of a high number of reader questions. Have a great weekend.

The Vista security feature that’s most effective — and the most annoying — will sometimes prevent the Run and command line tools from doing what you tell them to do. This is (usually) due to the fact that you haven’t told it you’re an Administrator. Note: this technique can be applied to other programs as well.

I overcome this annoyance by creating a desktop shortcut and setting its Properties to “Run as an Administrator”.
Go to Start >Programs and open the Accessories folder. Right-click on, and holding down the right-click, use the cursor to drag the black Command Prompt icon to a vacant area on your descktop. Let go and select (click) “Create shortcut here” from the list of choices.

Now you will have a new, black Command Prompt icon. Right-click on your new icon, and select Properties and click on the Shortcut tab. Now click on the “Advanced” button toward the bottom

Place a check in the “Run as Administrator” checkbox, and click the “OK” button twice. That’s it!

Now you will be able to use your programs, and accomplish the advanced commands as you expect you should.

Copyright 2007 © Tech Paul, All Rights Reserved.

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