News

Microsoft Promises To Improve UAC in Windows 7

Microsoft has been talking about future changes to Windows Vista's most maligned feature, User Account Control (UAC).

Microsoft has been talking about future changes to Windows Vista's most maligned feature, User Account Control (UAC). This security feature, which alerts users via popup boxes, may get modified with Microsoft's next-generation Windows OS, according to the "Engineering Windows 7" blog.

A post on Oct. 8 by Ben Fathi readily admits that "User Account Control (UAC) is, arguably, one of the most controversial features in Windows Vista."

UAC uses dialog boxes to inform a user about "system level" changes that often occur when downloading software. Vista users have complained from the beginning about the frequent popups. Apple even did a TV commercial making fun of them.

The premise behind UAC is to inform the users when the system may be threatened, even when a perceived threat is initiated by the user. It's sort of a built-in IT admin that questions user motivations on numerous levels.

Despite the promise of changes, reader feedback shared in the blog contained several negative comments about UAC.

"I do not like to be continuously asked if I want to do what I just told the computer to do…I feel like I am asked by Vista to approve every little thing I do on my PC and I find it very aggravating," said one reader.

The Microsoft team acknowledged the frustration with UAC. However, they say that the feature's potential benefit is that it forces "malware or poorly written software to show itself" and get the user's permission before it can harm the system.

Windows components account for approximately 40 percent of UAC prompts, but that number has been reduced with the release of Service Pack 1 for Vista.

Data from Microsoft's customer experience improvement program show that applications and tasks that generate UAC prompts have plummeted from 775,312 when Vista was introduced to 168,149 in August of this year.

"Windows has more of an opportunity to make deeper architectural changes in Windows 7, so you can expect fewer prompts from Windows components," said Fathi in the blog. "Reducing prompts in the software ecosystem and in Windows is a win-win proposition."

Fathi noted that the engineering team for Windows 7 has "taken a hard look at UAC" and that several key issues will be addressed, including reducing unnecessary or duplicated prompts, making critical prompts more identifiable, and making the prompts more informative so users can make "confident choices."

One of the goals for UAC was to give IT administrators and parents greater control by allowing them to lock down the system for certain users. Windows 7 will continue to build on the benefits of UAC in making systems more secure, Fathi said.

"As we evolve UAC for Windows 7 we will address the customer feedback and satisfaction issues with the prompts themselves," stated Fathi. "We've heard loud and clear that you are frustrated."

Windows 7, by most reports, is due to be ready in late 2009 or early 2010.

About the Author

Herb Torrens is an award-winning freelance writer based in Southern California. He managed the MCSP program for a leading computer telephony integrator for more than five years and has worked with numerous solution providers including HP/Compaq, Nortel, and Microsoft in all forms of media.

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

  • Hands On: New VS Code Insiders Build Creates Web Page from Image in Seconds

    New Vision support with GitHub Copilot in the latest Visual Studio Code Insiders build takes a user-supplied mockup image and creates a web page from it in seconds, handling all the HTML and CSS.

  • Naive Bayes Regression Using C#

    Dr. James McCaffrey from Microsoft Research presents a complete end-to-end demonstration of the naive Bayes regression technique, where the goal is to predict a single numeric value. Compared to other machine learning regression techniques, naive Bayes regression is usually less accurate, but is simple, easy to implement and customize, works on both large and small datasets, is highly interpretable, and doesn't require tuning any hyperparameters.

  • VS Code Copilot Previews New GPT-4o AI Code Completion Model

    The 4o upgrade includes additional training on more than 275,000 high-quality public repositories in over 30 popular programming languages, said Microsoft-owned GitHub, which created the original "AI pair programmer" years ago.

  • Microsoft's Rust Embrace Continues with Azure SDK Beta

    "Rust's strong type system and ownership model help prevent common programming errors such as null pointer dereferencing and buffer overflows, leading to more secure and stable code."

  • Xcode IDE from Microsoft Archrival Apple Gets Copilot AI

    Just after expanding the reach of its Copilot AI coding assistant to the open-source Eclipse IDE, Microsoft showcased how it's going even further, providing details about a preview version for the Xcode IDE from archrival Apple.

Subscribe on YouTube

Upcoming Training Events