Chris Henley is a fun and energetic representative of Microsoft. He works on the Developer Platform Evangelist team at Microsoft as an IT Professional Evangelist in the western region and is the co-author of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Administration Instant Reference from Sybex press. Chris is a regular speaker and presenter at user groups, Technet events, and major conferences around the US.
He has extensive experience in the world of computer networks. He is passionate about the way that technology helps people. He has an entertaining and insightful style of communicating technical information and of making difficult concepts easy to understand. He is an expert in server architecture and network design. He loves to push the envelope of what we think about computers, and what software can do. Chris spends his spare time playing XBOX360 with his wife and kids, fly fishing, camping, hiking, and searching for the best chocolate cake on planet earth.
As you are all aware one of the key changes that was introduced with Windows Vista is the use of User account Controls. These controls segment the user access token, and then manage access to local resources based on the standard user portion of the token. When elevated access is necessary User account control kicks in and we get one of a couple of different behaviors. We might get prompted for a password, we might get an administrative approval request. We might see nothing at all.
This feature will be included in Windows Server 2008. It is a great local security tool and rightly deserves to be included in the server family.
There are some recurring questions that I notice with regards to UAC.
Q: How do I turn off UAC?
A: It can be done; however, I would not recommend it. The base security that UAC provides far outweighs its annoying pop ups. In most cases what we really want to do is get rid of the pop ups. To get rid of the pop ups you can change their default behavior.
Q: How do I control the default behavior of the UAC prompts?
A; Watch this 10 minute video segment and I will show you where to go to change the behavior of the pop ups and some other basic stuff about UAC.
UAC Screencast Video
2 months ago I recorded a Webcast with intimate details, discussion, and demonstrations of UAC. It is more than an hours worth of good information about the theory and practical application behind UAC. This is a great primer to get you familiar with UAC.
UAC Webcast