Vista security: lighten up!

Of the many (and mostly ill-deserved) knocks against Windows Vista, the User Account Control (UAC) feature is perhaps the most commonly cited. Under UAC, all users - even administrators - operate under a tightened set of security restrictions intended to prevent malicious programs from running and unwanted changes from being made. When a suspect event occurs, user approval is required before execution is allowed to continue. For a "standard" user, this means entering an administrator's username and password. Administrators need only to approve the action, but the prompts are frequent enough that they can quickly become a major annoyance.

If you are the sole user of the computer and find UAC unecessarily intrusive, it's easy enough to disable the feature altogether:
- Go to Control Panel
- Double-click User Accounts
- Click Turn User Account Control on or off

However, UAC does provide a high level of security against malicious attacks and the misadventures of hapless users, so if you share your computer with others, turning off UAC altogether may be unwise. An alternative is to allow UAC to run, but disable its warnings for administrators:
- Go to Control Panel
- Double-click Administrative Tools
- Double-click Local Security Policy
- In the left pane, click the "spinner" (triangle) next to Local Policies
- Click Security Options
- In the right pane, scroll to near the bottom and double-click User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode
- Change from Prompt for consent to Elevate without prompting.

Of course, the above procedure effectively disables UAC altogether for any administrator login, so you are unprotected from certain malicious attacks, however rare they may be. A compromise is to disable "secure desktop." Secure desktop essentially freezes the computer (though programs continue to run) at a UAC prompt to prevent other processes or applications from providing the required permissions or consent. With secure desktop disabled, the simple prompt for permission to continue is far less disruptive:

- Go to Control Panel
- Double-click Administrative Tools
- Double-click Local Security Policy
- In the left pane, click the "spinner" (triangle) next to Local Policies
- Click Security Options
- In the right pane, scroll to near the bottom and double-click User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation
- Change from Enabled to Disabled