VIsta features

There were at least two feechurs of Vista Ultimate that drove me to upgrade it to XP Pro SP2 (now 3) after struggling with it for 10 months.

UAC - please tell me that this intrusive nightmare has been removed from Windows 7.

The "run as administrator" method that made copies of all the installed files that might be modified by running a program. For example Flight Simulator X which when installed required 15Gb and after you run it generated a further 13Gb of copied files making a eye watering 28Gb!

There were other reasons why I switched back to XP, but these were the worst.

Hi pjaj - Welcome to w7forums

If you don't like UAC (User Access Control), simply turn it off. There is no need in downgrading to XP when you can disable UAC.

Believe me when I say that I have done the very same thing that you are asking for. While I can see an advantages in having UAC features. It is a feature that drives me crazy. I have turned UAC off on my PC.

Configure Windows 7 UAC

Me too Cliff. Since it's invention. It has been hyped as protection against virus, etc, attacks. In fact it is only a text warning that you may be doing something which will jeopardise your security - usually wrongly. A decent antivirus program, including MSE, will decide and sort out the problem far more efficiently and discreetly

I haven't messed with mine, and it doesn't really bother me. I doubt it offers more security, it's simply a reminder for you to make sure that you want to do whatever you're doing. If you don't want it, as Clifford & davehc pointed out above, simply turn it off. And welcome to the forum, pjaj! Hope that we have been some help to you. I would never allow this to keep me from moving forward to Windows 7, it is the very best OS that Microsoft has ever produced. And far more secure than XP was in it's prime, which has been some time back.

For UAC, I've used an registry entry change so that it is still seen by windows as switched on but it is set as never notify but just turning it off without fiddling with the registry works just as well.

As for the Run as Administrator issue, I know that I've used it for a couple of programs and did not see any increase in disc space needed but I do not have the Flight Sim program you mention so I cannot directly comment on that.

I hate UAC, I hate UAC, I hate UAC, I hate UAC.

Did I say I hate UAC?

Do you have a link to a good description of the registry changes required for Windows 7, just in case I want to fiddle with it?

What's really annoying is that MS were touting the Run as Administrator problem / feechur / method for quite some time before Vista came out, pity they didn't bother to tell their own Flight Simulator developers! Left hand - right hand. But has anyone any info as to Windows 7? Is it a feature or has it been dropped or is it optional. The real problem was that Vista didn't give you an option, if your program installed itself with admin privileges then any file in the Program Files folder it tried to modify got copied and your program was conned into working with that rather than the original.

What's baffling is the fact that on Windows 7, when using the "run as administrator" mode, the above mentioned copying doesn't occur.

The page where I found my UAC registry change seems to be offline at the moment but here are the basic instrustions:

1) Create a System Restore or backup your Registry just to be safe

2) You need to use the Run option and type in the command REGEDIT

3) You then need to navigate to the following key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]

4) You then need to change the parameter in the following keys to 0
"ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin"=dword:0000000*
"ConsentPromptBehaviorUser"=dword:0000000*

If anything is confusing about these instructions, please ask before making changes.