UAC, Again

Gerry · 21 Jan 2010

I installed a retail copy of Win 7 Ultimate without activating it for the 30 days grace period. I then cleaned up my system and installed and activated my Retail copy of Ultimate and I have noticed something odd. When I was using it as a trial a lot of the icons on my desktop had the yellow and blue triangle on them and upon doubleclicking on the said icon I would get the "User Action Control" menu and have to select "Yes" to continue. On the activated copy I am now using none of my desktop have the triangle showing or do they launch the User Action Control menu pop up. Both installs are/were using the default setting for UAC. The only difference is the trial install was on an old 40GB IDE drive wheras the other was on a raided sata system(2x74GB raptors), I doubt this would have any bearing on the matter. What exactly are the conditions where the security Triangle should appear on an icon.

pparks1 · 21 Jan 2010

Only icons which will trip the UAC system will show that shield that you discuss.

For example, right click on My Computer and the option "MANAGE" show show the shield. Or right click on My Computer, and choose Properties. On the left had side of the screen, where it says Control Panel Home...all 4 links (device manager, remote settings, system protection and advanced system settings) should all show that shield.

With default Windows 7 UAC settings (at the 3rd tick mark), clicking on any of these should take you in WITHOUT a UAC prompt...since by default it doesn't notify you when you try to run something which requires escalation.

Gerry · 05 Feb 2010

Thanks for that clarification. What was throwing me was the fact that Apps like PowerDVD(which I had gone into Properties/Advanced/ and ticked Run As Admin) do not show the shield wheras other apps where I had done the exact same(Run as Admin) still showed the Shield. It was only when I went back into icon properties and selected "Change Icon" choose the very same one as there was only the one to select from and applied it did the icon loose the shield. Somewhat of an anomaly.