Vista and UAC

[Michlo]

Greetings,

 

after seeing some posts on Vista's new security feature (UAC) which gives you the extra layer of protection for installations / changes to your system I thought I'd re-post something I wrote a few weeks ago which was buried in a thread in case it helps others:

 

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Ahem, first of all, there is nothing wrong with Vista. :P I've been using it just fine since Beta.

 

Second, advising everyone to completely turn off UAC is a mistake. There are plenty out there who aren't as computer literate as we on the boards (and even some ON the boards for that matter) and although it isn't a particularly friendly feature it IS there for a reason. It protects those who can't protect themselves and believe me, having worked in IT for years, I've dealt with these people a LOT. They are also usually the ones responsible for sending viruses on to everyone.

 

Also, you're not going to get many pop-ups anyway after you have everything installed and running.

 

Finally, if you turn it off altogether you are then faced with the red shield icon in your system tray warning you that you are not completely protected. You CAN turn that off as well but to my mind that would be stupid as then you'll not be warned should your virus protection fail, etc.

 

If you ARE the admin on your box and you are somewhat savvy so you feel you're protecting yourself sufficiently (anti-virus/malware protection, firewall, etc.) then you don't have to turn it off, you can just have the requests silently succeed (known in Vista as silently elevating to admin).

 

 

Open the Run Command and type secpol.msc

This will open the Local Security Policy.

 

Browse through the Local Policy to the Security Policy. Click on the Security Policy folder. In the window to the right locate:

 

User Account Control: Behavior of the Elevation prompt for administrator's in Admin Approval Mode.

 

Change it to: Elevate without Prompting.

 

 

 

Please remember when giving computer advice that you're giving it to people of all tech levels. :)

 

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I hope that is of some help.

 

Cheers.

[LHammonds]

It might also be mentioned that you can avoid Vista's problem with directory security by installing Oblivion to someplace other than C:\Program Files\

 

This solution is really only for those unfortunate people that have Vista with Oblivion installed to the default folder and do not want to re-install.

 

I've also heard that it works if you extract mod archives to a temporary location and then copy / paste the files to Oblivion's Data folder.

 

When you extract an archive directly to Oblivion's Data folder that is "protected" under the "C:\Program Files" folder, then you only get the files in the root of the archive such as the readme and .esp plugin but not the "Meshes" and "Textures" sub-folders (thus causing yellow exclamation marks in-game).

 

I do not personally have Vista on my PC but everything I mentioned was from reading what others have said as well as helping people trouble-shoot my mods on their Vista PCs (with confirmation as to what worked).

 

LHammonds

[HouseAtlantic]

I had never installed or played a PC game before I had installed Oblivion, much less, modded one or installed any player-made software. The case is always not understanding Vista completely or not experienced with mods in general at the start and I found out too late, the re-installation would take days to get my mods back into play. Maybe this should be a sticky to the forum?

[Michlo]

First of, underscores removed, sorry about that.

 

Second, the mention of installing to somewhere other than the default is an excellent one that I ought to have included. Not only has this helped people with Vista / mod problems but it is, in general, a good rule to follow for anything that includes data you wish to retain.

 

On all of my PCs I use partitions to "slice" the hard drive(s) into sections.

 

You can use built-in tools (Vista at least) or programs like Partition Magic.

 

So I usually have my C drive for the Operating System and programs which won't include their own data, a D drive for all of my personal data, G for my games, M for music and V for videos. I'm not suggesting that you have to go that far, of course.

 

The reason that this is so helpful is because if your computer should crash to such a degree that you cannot access your Operating System or need to reinstall it, your data will not usually be impacted as the computer treats it as though it were on a seperate disk to your OS.

 

Of course, the best way to be backing up important data is to also have it somewhere completely seperate to your computer. This could be as simple as another networked computer or burned to disk.

 

Cheers.

[LHammonds]

Second, the mention of installing to somewhere other than the default is an excellent one that I ought to have included.

Well, I made sure quite some time ago that this information was included in the Oblivion Mods FAQ and I try to recommend everyone read through it at least once and that all players new to using mods HAVE TO read it before I help them troubleshoot a problem (especially when I know the answer is in the FAQ)...well, maybe I don't always tell them to read it before trying to help. ;)

 

I also use multiple hard drives with multiple partitions. This is how I have my system setup:

 

Drive 0:

C: - Operating System

D: - Applications, Swap File, Temp files

E: - Data

 

Drive 1:

F: - Data Backup

G: - Games

 

Once I get my OS and applications installed and configured, I rarely ever have to "defrag" drives C: and D: because they remain in an optimized state and do not change.

 

Drive C: never runs out of space because temp files, data and anything changing are never stored on C:

 

I use SyncBack to copy my data from E: to F: on a daily basis and even though I have about 40 GB of "data" files, it only takes about 5 minutes to keep them in sync because SyncBack only updates the changes. ;) Related Article: Backup Your Data Files

 

After I install a new game, I defrag G: and do not need to do so again until I install another game. ;)

 

LHammonds