Vista - Seeking Pointers on UAC

Hello, I'll try to keep this as brief as possible. I am a new Vista Ultimate
user. I acquired a laptop with it installed lastweek, and have been
installing sotware and configuring ever since.

I started out with a user count that had Administrator privileges, but
encountered problems and switched to the Administrator account to install
software. Hoever, then I noticed that when I reverted back to my user
account (still with Administrator privileges) that I was encoutering
problems. As a result I have completely turned off UAC. It is my desire to
be as secure as possible, and I am even willing to be somewhat incovenienced
to do so (such as the prompts asking me if it is ok to run). But I was
running into problems even getting things to run properly, or *at all* until
I turned off UAC.

I would like to turn UAC back on, which is why I am here. However, I can
not do so unless the problems I have witnessed are resolved. Rather than
list all of my woes, I thought I would start with just one problem and
perhaps I can extrapolate solutions to other problems from what I learn.

I attempted to install Zone Alarm Security Suite (the latest version that
supports Windows Vista). I could not get the installation program to run *at
all* under my user account with Administrator privileges. When I switched to
the Administrator account it insalled perfectly. Then I switched back to my
user account (still with Admin privilges) and I found that Zone Alarm was not
running correctly. I can't remembr if the True Vector service was running or
not, but the UI was definitely not - I could not interact with Zne Alarm at
all. The solution, in the end, was to turn off UAC. Then, it all worked
perfectly.

Being that Zone Alarm is well know, I am hoping that someone might explain
how I should go about running it, while keeping UAC enabled.

Aso, I am willing to help myself, so if anyone can point me at white papers
or other articles on UAC and how to work with it, I am all ears.

Thanks,
-Neil Kisr

Even though ZA claims to be Vista compatible it is not. Uninstall it and see
if that solves your problem. Use the Windows firewall.

"Neil Kiser" <neil@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9ED062EC-23EC-466C-B052-AD4AD3067C31@xxxxxx

"Neil Kiser" <neil@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9ED062EC-23EC-466C-B052-AD4AD3067C31@xxxxxxMr. Kisr,

Based upon personal experience I can tell you that ZoneAlarm products
are not compatible with Vista, regardless of what ZoneAlarm tells you.
Of course, this is only my personal opinion.

C.B.


--
It is the responsibility and duty of everyone to help the underprivileged
and less fortunate among us.

Neil,
I can't comment on the compatibility of Zone Alarm with Vista, but I
understand that you were just citing your problems with ZA as an example.

What caught my attention was your statement "I could not get the
installation program to run *at all* " about when you tried to install ZA.
I've encountered the same problem occasionally with both install EXEs and
program EXEs, even with at least one SysInternal program. I tracked the
source to Vista's Data Execution Prevention (DEP) feature.

DEP is intended to prevent damage by programs that run from memory (usually
some type of malware) by monitoring how that program attempts to use RAM.
Vista is supposed to provide a pop-up when it prevents a program run due to
DEP violation (and I've seen that), but there are times when it just prevents
the EXE from executing without notification.

There is a way to exclude an EXE from DEP monitoring (which I'll detail
below), but first the obvious caveat: DEP seems to be a valuable security
feature, so if you circumvent it with the steps below, be sure that you can
trust the EXE before 'allowing it in the backdoor'.

In (My) Computer, click System Protection
click Advanced tab
click Performance Settings button
click Data Execution Prevention (DEP) tab
be sure the 2nd radio button is selected (".... except those I select")
click Add button
navigate to the EXE that is not running in order to add it DEP's exclusion
list.

I expect that if you were to add ZA's install EXE to the DEP exclusion list,
that it would now run. Of course, that's moot if ZA truelly is not
Vista-compatible. If other problems you've encountered sound like EXEs not
running, consider adding them to the DEP exclusion list. This may resolve
what seemed like UAC problem.

Hope this is helpful; at the very least it's additional information.
JohnDavid

"Neil Kiser" wrote: