Everything you wanted to know about User Account Control

I’ve got a pair of posts up at ZDNet that deal with the controversial User Account Control (UAC) feature in Windows Vista. Due to an unfortunate editing error, a big chunk of the second post was inadvertently left out of the original post (which was Slashdotted). So if you read that second post and found it a little fuzzy, well, go back and take another look.

• A fresh look at Vista’s User Account Control shows the dialog boxes you’re likely to see when you try to install a program or configure a system setting in Windows Vista.
• A fresh look at Vista’s User Account Control, Part 2 explains why you may encounter UAC consent dialog boxes when you perform seemingly innocent file operations. (This is the one that was inadvertently munged in its initial posting.)

The conclusion to this three-part series lists ways you can work around UAC (some safe, some stupid and – alas – already widely publicized). I’ll also offer Microsoft some suggestions on how to make this feature work better in Vista’s final release.

If you’re thinking of playing with evaluating Windows Vista Beta 2 when it’s released to the public (maybe sooner than you think), be sure to save a link to this page.