Entries tagged with uac - TechNet Edge

TechNet Radio: Mitigating Application Compatibility Issues on Windows Vista Using Shims

erickingfrog — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:26:00 GMT

In this episode of TechNet Radio, we explore many of the compatibility issues that the Windows team has experienced at customer sites in the context of what we can fix without updating the application, and how to fix it. The Windows Application Compatibility Infrastructure (Shim Infrastructure) is a powerful tool for resolving compatibility issues and unblocking Windows Vista deployments, but understanding where and how to leverage and configure shims can be daunting until you learn some of the tricks and subtleties, many of which we expose! Plus, we feature another installment of our ‘tip of the week’ with Chris Avis.

Vista UAC PM Interview

extreme — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:01:00 GMT

Austin Wilson has been working with the product team on UAC well before it was even created in Windows Vista and gives us some insight into why it is the way it is. He clears up what UAC really is and speaks about the parental control capabilities with UAC. Some hard questions are answered like why should a consumer or an IT Pro even bother to run UAC and if we're doing anything about the number of prompts people get. Additionally, he shows us how and why an IT Pro can still use UAC and not get prompted as well as giving us insight into what are plans for UAC are in the future.

Learn more about UAC
View a screencast comparing UAC at RTM vs SP1

Vista 30, Rootkits 0

KingCobra — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:21:00 GMT

I’m glad to see some positive press on Windows Vista. Security is a tough business and when you’re on the desktops of millions of computers, everything is magnified to the Nth degree. A couple of recent articles and postings are getting a lot of attention. See “Vista's Despised UAC Nails Rootkits, Tests Find” by John E. Dunn. This of course got picked up on the popular site Neowin.

Since a lot of you aren’t yet running Windows Vista, here’s a quick refresh on the tech. In Windows Vista, there are two types of user accounts: standard user accounts and administrator accounts. Standard users are equivalent to the standard user account in previous versions of Windows. Standard users have limited administrative privileges and user rights—they cannot install or uninstall applications that install into %systemroot%, change system settings, or perform other administrative tasks. However, standard users can perform these tasks if they are able to provide valid administrative credentials when prompted. With UAC enabled, members of the local Administrators group run with the same access token as standard users. Only when a member of the local Administrators group gives approval can a process use the administrator’s full access token. This process is the basis of the principle of Admin Approval Mode.

See the TechNet article, “Understanding and Configuring User Account Control in Windows Vista” for a detailed review of UAC. If you want to see it in action, see the four minute video.

Windows Vista SP1 UAC improvements

mkleef — Thu, 15 May 2008 01:03:00 GMT

UAC is often maligned as over prompting for a single task. In this short and sharp clip I show a basic difference of Windows Vista RTM and Windows Vista SP1 and the reduction in UAC prompting to create a folder in a protected system location from four to one.

Steve Riley talks security

AdamBomb — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 06:45:00 GMT

If you’ve ever been to a TechEd event, hopefully you were able to catch on of Steve’s security sessions. If you haven’t, here’s a short glimpse in to what you’re missing. We talk about the death of the DMZ, some of the Vista security improvements, and Steve’s suggestion for the top thing you can do to make your network more secure.