Here's ONE Way to Make Vista Less Annoying

OK, this one's a little bit technical, but makes using Vista much more pleasant. As photographers who now have digital darkrooms, little tweaks to make our working environment run smoother is always a welcomed thing. If we all had the bucks, we'd be buying Macs dedicated to our post-processing work, but budgets don't always allow that. Many of us bought PCs or laptops recently that came with Vista, so let's make Vista better to work with.

One of Vista's many security features is the User Account Control, but it gets really annoying when you try to start a program (i.e. Photoshop), and the whole screen goes black and a popup box wants you to confirm that you really want to start the program you just selected. Thankfully, there is a way to reduce that annoyance but not lose the protection.

Your screen "goes dark" because Vista takes a screenshot of your desktop, then darkens that image and places it over your real desktop... then your real desktop gets inactivated at that moment as another layer of protection. Then the popup shows up, and once you click OK, it all returns to normal. Ugh.

The following instructions will make one change to lessen the annoyance: you will still get a popup to confirm (important, especially when Uncle Fred forwards you an email with a virus attached), but the screenshot and disabling of the desktop will go away. Believe me, just a quick popup really has a much better "feel" than your whole environment getting blacked out. You do need to be an administrator on your PC to change this setting, but most people are by default (I hope).

OK, it's a little complex to do, but once you run through the steps, you'll see that the steps are not complicated... the bulleted list looks more complex than it really is. Give it a whirl!

Here's how:
-Open a Run command window. Easy to do: hold down the Windows key and hit the "R" key. Up pops the Run window.
-In the text box of the Run window, type secpol.msc, and hit Enter. The annoying popup/blackout will probably occur! Just confirm to continue.
-A "Local Security Policy" program will start, with some folders to click on over on the left.
-Single-click on the Local Policies folder. You'll see a few folders now appear on the right side.
-In that right side, double-click on Security Options
-Now a big list of items appears on the right side. You will probably need to make the column wider to read the titles. Scroll all the way down and look for the item titled User Account Control: Switch to secure desktop when prompting for elevation.
-Disable that puppy! Just double-click it, and a window will pop up. Select Disable and OK it.
-Close the Local Policy window, and you're done!

Now open a program and you'll see that the annoyance factor has greatly reduced, but still protects your PC.

Disclaimer: Technically, you are reducing one of the many security items that Vista provides, so to cover bases here, this is totally at your own risk. Nonetheless, you are still way more secure than the NOTHING that XP provides as far as program execution goes. I have the Vista setting turned off for good on my PC, and I don't even run any virus protection (no, never had a virus). If you've used XP in the past and didn't have someone successfully attack your PC, it's quite reasonable to believe that the glut of Vista security modules with one disabled is still a far safer environment.

BTW, I did this trick with Vista Ultimate, but I haven't tried it on the Home versions. If someone finds that the steps are different for Home versions, please email me.

-Paul

Vista - BAH!!! I hate having to deal with the spouse's Vista-based. So many things like this to deal with. Thanks for the info.

There is a much easier and documented way to turn off User Account Contol. Control Panel\Users.

There's a check box for user account control. Uncheck it and reboot.

- Dan.

Dan - This will still leave UAC partially on, though, which is theoretically more secure than what you're suggesting. Also, I wonder if this avoids the problem where UAC clobbers the monitor profile LUTs...I doubt it...

Geez, you guys. I just turn on my old refurbished Mac and it works fine. Kind of like the Energizer Bunny.

I disagree with your assertion that we'd all have Macs if we had our druthers.

Easiest way to deal with Vista's foibles? Keep using XP.

OK, I admit it, while I do want to pass on things to make Vista easier, I do enjoy the Vista vs. XP vs. Mac uprising.

Dan, just to clarify (and David B said it too), I'm not suggesting anyone to turn UAC OFF. The directions I posted are just to stop the disabling of the desktop, but still require you to confirm the action which still offers probably 80% of the protection. Uncle Fred can be our worst enemy even with his good intentions!

Robert, yep, XP works just fine, as does Photoshop 6.0.

I find it amusing every time I read about computer frustrations. Are they really "Computer" frustrations, or "User" frustrations?

LOL. So does CS3 on an XP machine, Paul.

I think those funny Mac commercials must be tremendously effective at convincing people they need to spend twice as much on computers. I have been using Vista for over a year, and after a bit of time making adjustments like the one mentioned by Paul, I have no problems. Maybe that's because I don't consider a single mouse click a problem when it reasures me that my system is protected. I have have been using computers for over 30 years, and have had viruses and other problems in the past. Since I started using Vista and McAfee, those problems are still in the past. If you want to let Apple's advertizing agency brain-wash you into spending more money, go ahead, I'm sure they have a fine product, too. I'm retired, watching my budget, and just invested in a new camera instead of spending a lot of money to avoid a couple of mouse clicks a day.

LOL! Good one Robert... OK, you win that round.

Wayne, your reply is way too practical and makes way too much sense. Stop it. We're trying to get unreasonable and argue over senseless things here.

In reality, we shouldn't have to even THINK about the OS. Our goal is making sure we have a trustworthy place to run our darkroom software, so creating images is foremost in our minds. Price aside, Macs are great. Macs also have a MUCH lower attack rate due to the very OS they run (much harder to program against). Vista has the potential to be a great OS, but there are so many hacker darts flung at it, the walls of protection are always up... creates a klunky interface that has to be tweaked, sometimes with things that the general public doesn't know about (hence, the reason for my original post). OK, I'm a Mac fan at heart, but I make my living developing software on Windows PCs, which is why I don't have a Mac anymore (other than my SE/30). But I tell you this: there isn't an operating system in the world that could have survived the onslaught that Windows has endured all these years from hackers the world over, and still be the #1 installed OS on the planet that still works (other than the video profile problem! lol!).

OK, back to work. Y'all can beat this reply up. all you want. have at it!

Dang, Wayne, and I was just making a joke (as evidenced by all the grin-faces in my post).

Paul and Steve -- You are right (should not type while I am taking 200mg of prednasone a day -- they said it would make me "grumpy"). But I do feel the need to defend that "PC" guy in the Apple commercials. According to him, we are not calling it "Vista" anymore, anyway, so get with the program and remember it's just "Windows" again! ... After all, TODAY is the 25th anniversery of Bill Gates absconding with that Xerox GUI, so we should all be looking forward to the next thing to make even more money for Microsoft -- Windows 7! I bet you can't wait!

Sometimes you get an equal opportunity bug: I've been having trouble importing NEF files from my CF card into Lightroom -- LR freezes -- and thought it was a Vista problem. I was just Googling for answers though and found out it's a common problem with Apple users too.

(The only "fix" I've found, btw, is to download the CF card onto the computer, then import into LR.)

Hmmmm. My laptop has Vista Home Premium. I just tried this, and I immediately get an error message saying Windows cannot find secpol.msc. Any ideas?

I have long ago cut off the protection in the User Account Control. Could that have anything to do with secpol.msc not being found?

What interests me about this is the possibility of my monitor calibration not being immediately trashed every thing I cut the darn computer on. Any suggestions on a permanent fix for that issue?

Bill, that was a concern of mine... Vista Home editions don't have all the networking protocols and other administrative tasks (I just remembered). That means you may not have the Local Policy module. But since security is handled on all version, there HAS to be another way to do that. I'll check into it... just need to find someone with a Home version.

Oy vey, if we could only get this much participation in the photo forums...

The Apple OS isn't harder to program viruses and malware for. It's no more natively secure than Windoze. The reason there are fewer of these issues for Macs is because the people (and I use that term loosely, maggots/pieces of steaming cowflop/etc. would be more appropriate terms) who write this stuff want to inflict as much damage as possible. That means, simply based on numbers, that they write the stuff for the Windoze environment because something like 97% of computers run Windoze in some form or other.

Part of the reason Windoze is so bloated is the backward compatibility that's built in. If each new version were written on a clean sheet it could be much more streamlined and efficient than it is. I don't know what makes the Mac OS different in this regard but apparently it is. Gates already stole on OS from Jobs, maybe he can get invited over to the garage again and steal another one.

If I can, I'm going to continue running XP until the next version of Windoze comes out. That said, the beefed up 64 bit support in CS4 is quite tempting and if I can't find a copy of XP64 somewhere when I decide to upgrade from CS3, I may have to switch over to Vista (can I have some of that prednisone, I'm starting to break out in hives )

Good analysis! I did just order Production Premium CS4 which will start out on my dual core laptop at 32-bit, with my second install going on a way-in-the-future dual Xeon at 64-bit (Does everyone know that Adobe allows a second install if you own 2 PCs or PC/laptop? Just not for two USERS). Anyway, I figure that if I'm going to try and run CS4 at 64-bit, it needs to be a dedicated box just for that, not glopping it up with Office and email and Flight Sim and my Commodore 64 emulator... things like that.


BTW, see what this 5D2 is doing to us?? I used to just buy the PHOTOSHOP upgrade, but noooooooooooooo, now there's video editing and sound and authoring and....

It's a good time to be a photographer.

Yeah, and having tried to use the video editing capabilities of CS3 I can say that you're probably going to want to buy a more fulsome and user friendly video editing suite if you're going to be doing video with a 5D MkII.

Windows 7 previews are now out. I'm of the may take Microsoft a while to recover from Vista camp.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7714080.stm

Dave