Everyone that has worked in Windows Vista regularly has surely come in contact with the User Account Control, the pestering service that brings up a window asking for your confirmation if an application needs elevated rights. The idea of the UAC is in fact sound but Microsoft apparently did not think of that required elevated rights to run. It was not all Microsoft’s fault though, many elevated prompts were caused by applications that would not need an UAC prompt if the software developer put a little more thought into the process.

A positive side effect is the increase in engineering quality since the release of Windows Vista. Software developers are actually putting more effort into coding applications that do not need elevated rights. Can’t be done for all but many function just fine without.

Back to Norton’s UAC. It basically replaces the original Windows Vista UAC giving the user more options in hand when an UAC prompt appears.

The software adds a Do not ask me again checkbox to the UAC prompt which can whitelist an application so that the user won’t be asked again if the application needs elevated privileges.

One side effect is that the tool is sending meta data to Norton whenever the application is being used. Metadata including the file name and the hash. Norton apparently uses that data to build a whitelist on their own that could be shipped with Norton UAC.

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The advantage of this solution is that you can disable the User Account Control for selected applications. This is for instance useful if you use an application day in day out getting that irritating UAC popup whenever you start it. The following process has to be done only once but it takes some time, here are the steps:

1)Download and install the Application Compatibility Toolkit

2) In the Start menu, locate the new folder. Find the shortcut icon for Compatibility Administrator. Right click it and clik Run as administrator.

3) In the left hand pane, right-click on the database under Custom Databases and select Create New, and select Application Fix.

4) Enter the name and other details of the application you want to alter behavior on and then browse to it to select it. Click Next.

5) Click Next until you are in the Compatibility Fixes screen.

6) On the Compatibility Fixes screen, find the item RunAsInvoker, and check it.

7) Click Next and then Finish.

8) Select File and Save As. Save the file as a filename.SDB type file in a directory you will easily find it.

9) Copy the .sdb file to the Vista computer you want to alter the elevation prompt behavior on.

10) Click Start>All Programs>Accessories. Right click Command Prompt and click Run as administrator.

11) Run the command below:

sdbinst \.sdb

For example, if you saved the .SDB file as abc.sdb in the c:\Windows folder, the command should be like this:

sdbinst c:\windows\abc.sdb

It should prompt: Installation of complete.

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Most Windows Vista users get really annoyed after a short while because those UAC popups open many times during a normal session. The only way so far to get rid of UAC was to disable it completely. While this got rid of the UAC popups it did also turn the security feature of completely. Not a big problem for users who know what they can and what they can’t do with their system but surely a problem for inexperienced users.

Tweak UAC is a small software that offers a third possibility. With it you can enable the Quiet Mode for UAC which leaves UAC on for all users but suppresses the UAC popups that pop up rather frequently.

This means that the benefits of UAC such as running programs like Internet Explorer in protected mode will still be available while the annoying UAC popups are removed.

Tweak UAC does not need to be installed on your PC. Just run it and select ‘Leave UAC operating in the Quiet Mode’ when the option appears.

Read More:

Tweak UAC Homepage
via ThinkTechno

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