Let's discuss UAC here

That certainly is not enough difference to convince me to disable UAC.

pparks1 said:

Ok, after running through a test in our last thread ( the one we hijacked), it was noted that I was using Windows 7 32-bit before and Windows 7 64-bit would tell a different story.

Here was the test that I performed. On my desktop (Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 at 3.00Ghz with 4GB of RAM running Windows 64-bit Ultimate), I turned off the machine. I started my stop watch from the time that I hit the power button. I waited until exactly 2 minutes before I clicked on the Start Orb, then right clicked on My Computer and choose Manage. This gave the machine time to boot and get services started etc. I then ran the test 3 times with UAC on and 3 times with it off. Here are the results averaged.

Avg time with UAC enabled : 2:08.16
Avg time with UAC turned off: 2:07.33

So, while there is a small difference (less than 1 hundredth of 1%)..this could come from my inability to start instantly at the 2:00 mark and navigate perfectly with my mouse to perform exactly the same steps. Either way, I cannot classify what I am seeing as "night and day difference".

So, I stand by my original opinion that while the UAC system might not be perfect in it's design, it's not likely adding any additional overhead that a typical system is not able to overcome.

Hmm... I can't say anything, on my computer (with my workload) enabling UAC does slow things down somewhat... I mean, it's not slow - slow... it's just if I hit [windows+e] to open explorer, without UAC it just springs out, no delays. With UAC on, it took maybe around a second, maybe less, but there's a slight delay. When I work, I tend to click explorer jump start list like crazy, so having a slight delay and no delay really means something to me. It's like those who're accustomed with gaming mouse (very sensitive in sense of tracking, not pointer speed) will almost always curse like crazy when forced to use an el cheapo wireless mouse (which both have a slight delay on slight movement, and overall "smoothness" of the pointer motion).

zzz2496

zzz2496 said:

On my computer, disabling UAC made my computer much faster, it's like night and day...

zzz2496 said:

Hmm... I can't say anything, on my computer (with my workload) enabling UAC does slow things down somewhat... I mean, it's not slow - slow... it's just if I hit [windows+e] to open explorer, without UAC it just springs out, no delays. With UAC on, it took maybe around a second, maybe less, but there's a slight delay.

This is EXACTLY the reason that i like to put a stopwatch against these types of claims. For somebody reading the original post, they are expecting a massive Night to Day difference when they disable UAC. However, now that night and day difference is only a "slight delay" from the same poster.

zzz2496: I truly think your perceived performance issues are the result of system load and other factors impacting your launch speeds. I don't believe it's the UAC system hogging resources whatsoever. My launch speeds of Windows Explorer using WinKey+E on my 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows 7 appear to be identical with or without UAC.

Just restarted, I re-enabled UAC back to default settings (for the second time today), I absolutely notice the slight delay upon opening explorer, and there's a delay from my computer-> manage -----14.6 seconds -----> Computer management window showed up. Device manager took approximately same time ~15secs, Resource Monitor also took more or less the same time. Everything that needs elevation will have a standard delay of around 15 seconds, may it be an elevated command prompt, device manager, computer management, resource monitor, show processes from all users in task manager, everything... sigh...

For now, I only see that "consent.exe" is the one that holds the whole loading process down... I don't know, and I don't like it, thus another restart to disable UAC after this... :)

zzz2496

edit: Thank god I didn't imagine things...

zzz2496 said:

Just restarted, I re-enabled UAC back to default settings (for the second time today), I absolutely notice the slight delay upon opening explorer, and there's a delay from my computer-> manage -----14.6 seconds -----> Computer management window showed up. Device manager took approximately same time ~15secs, Resource Monitor also took more or less the same time. Everything that needs elevation will have a standard delay of around 15 seconds, may it be an elevated command prompt, device manager, computer management, resource monitor, show processes from all users in task manager, everything... sigh...

But what level of delay are you seeing doing these exact same things without UAC enabled?

On my work computer, the E6400 running 64-bit...here are my measured times for these tasks with UAC enabled at default level, doing all of these in this order from a fresh reboot

1). Winkey+E: 0.85 seconds
2). Right Click My Computer, Manage: 5.31 seconds
3). From Control Panel, Systems and Security, Device Manager: 2.62 seconds for all hardware to show up
4). From Task Manager, Performance, Resource Monitor: 2.52 seconds for all processes to appear
5). From Task Manager, Processes, Show Processes from All Users: 0.85 seconds
6). Elevated command prompt: Right click, run as admin: 1.5 seconds with me clicking on OK.
7). Winkey+E: Fastest I have been able to stop stopwatch is 0.22 seconds. It's pretty much instant.

So, I cannot explain why you are seeing 15 second delays in these tasks. As you can see, I'm only seeing 5 seconds at most and often less then 3 seconds for any of those tasks with the UAC system on.

Just logged in, UAC disabled, everything that needs elevation starts at less than 3 secs. Even clicking the "Speaker" icon in taskbar shows without any delay when UAC disabled, when UAC enabled, it took a slight delay, not very long, but there's a delay there. Does it conflict with any of my drivers? or with some service I have up and running? I don't know, I don't care, all I care is when UAC on, it's delaying things... I don't like delays, so I killed UAC, simple.

zzz2496

pparks1 said:

zzz2496 said:

Just restarted, I re-enabled UAC back to default settings (for the second time today), I absolutely notice the slight delay upon opening explorer, and there's a delay from my computer-> manage -----14.6 seconds -----> Computer management window showed up. Device manager took approximately same time ~15secs, Resource Monitor also took more or less the same time. Everything that needs elevation will have a standard delay of around 15 seconds, may it be an elevated command prompt, device manager, computer management, resource monitor, show processes from all users in task manager, everything... sigh...

But what level of delay are you seeing doing these exact same things without UAC enabled?

On my work computer, the E6400 running 64-bit...here are my measured times for these tasks with UAC enabled at default level, doing all of these in this order from a fresh reboot

1). Winkey+E: 0.85 seconds
2). Right Click My Computer, Manage: 5.31 seconds
3). From Control Panel, Systems and Security, Task Manager: 2.62 seconds for all hardware to show up
4). From Task Manager, Performance, Resource Monitor: 2.52 seconds for all processes to appear
5). From Task Manager, Processes, Show Processes from All Users: 0.85 seconds
6). Elevated command prompt: Right click, run as admin: 1.5 seconds with me clicking on OK.
7). Winkey+E: Fastest I have been able to stop stopwatch is 0.22 seconds. It's pretty much instant.

So, I cannot explain why you are seeing 15 second delays in these tasks. As you can see, I'm only seeing 5 seconds at most and often less then 3 seconds for any of those tasks with the UAC system on.

Probably consent.exe dislikes some of my services/drivers/whatever, I don't know. Everything that needs elevation will consume almost flat 15 secs (give or take one second).

Edit: confirmed, without UAC:
1. right click my comp -> manage ---- 2.3 secs ---> window showed up
2. Resource monitor --> 1.7 secs
3. Device manager --> 1.3 secs

zzz2496 said:

Does it conflict with any of my drivers? or with some service I have up and running? I don't know, I don't care, all I care is when UAC on, it's delaying things... I don't like delays, so I killed UAC, simple.

That is fair enough, if it's better for you without it...by all means...turn it off. But I don't recommend to most others that this will improve their performance as it's nill for me and many other users.

zzz2496 said:

Edit: confirmed, without UAC:
1. right click my comp -> manage ---- 2.3 secs ---> window showed up
2. Resource monitor --> 1.7 secs
3. Device manager --> 1.3 secs

I went in on my E8400 64-bit desktop, turned off UAC and tried all 3 things that you list
1). Right click My Computer, manage: 4.80 seconds --> window showed up
2). Resource monitor: 1.24 seconds for window, 3.1 seconds for processees
3). Device Manager: 1.6 seconds

So, your box is even faster than mine for all 3 tasks with UAC disabled. For reference with UAC enabled, timing again I get
1). Right click My Computer, manage: 4.87 seconds --> window showed up
2). Resource monitor: 1.20 seconds for window, 3.08 seconds for processees
3). Device Manager: 1.78 seconds

Yeah, well... disabling UAC made everything fast again. Note: there was no "slow down" per-se, but whenever I start anything that needs UAC confirmation, or UAC check (everything with yellow/blue shield) will delay quite a somewhat (~15 secs for crying out loud). I use the admin user for day-to-day use, and use "run as" for "suspicious" apps. Sometimes if I really concerned, I logged in (using fast user switching) to a standard user, and do whatever I need to do there, while my admin user still logged in...

zzz2496

Edit: There's a reason for people to generate MD5/SHA1 hashes for their installer/apps... :) So that you can trust it... :)

zzz2496 said:

whenever I start anything that needs UAC confirmation, or UAC check (everything with yellow/blue shield) will delay quite a somewhat (~15 secs for crying out loud).

Well, in your case there is clearly an issue somewhere. I'm not seeing 15 second delays clicking on anything which has a shield attached to to it. I've worked with numerous computers in our office which I have put Windows 7 onto and they don't see long delays launching things noted by the blue and yellow shield.

I personally hate it when I have problems like this, I drive myself nuts trying to figure out why it is happening. Had a peculiar problem when I built my machine and my Seagate 7200.12 hard drive would benchmark on all apps in the 25-40ms range in my new box. However, other hard drives scored just fine in my new box....(12-15ms). And the Seagate 7200.12 scored just fine (12.3ms) on my other machine/motherboard. I tried everything (BIOS updates, new cables, different drivers, different ports, different BIOS settings, different OS's, etc). No matter what I did, the 7200.12 was slow in my new box. So, I just upgraded my Linux machine to the 7200.12 and put a WD Caviar Black into my new box.