The Windows 7 UAC Slider, and What You Can Do on Windows Vista Today

re: The Windows 7 UAC Slider, and What You Can Do on Windows Vista Today

Eric — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:36:12 GMT

> Some drivers have been known not do this

> switch ... elegantly ... including sending

> the monitor a singnal to switch to an invalid

> mode.

Ahhhh, that makes a lot of sense!

> Are there no more current drivers available?

Unfortunately, no - running the latest. I think the workstation is running the Intel's Q965 chipset - one of the first ones they made that supported Aero. I've also had a fun issue where installing some patches (and things like IE8) will shut off the drivers with a "drivers are not compatible with this version of Windows."

If I turn Secure Desktop on and turn off DWM, my LCD panels stay active the entire time - a brief flash of black, but no video mode change.

I can't say it enough - I'm a huge fan of UAC. I used to have to fight and fight to make "standard user compatibility" a priority here and no-one took it serously until Vista. It's definitely working as intended! :-D

re: The Windows 7 UAC Slider, and What You Can Do on Windows Vista Today

Chris Jackson - MSFT — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:00:10 GMT

someone-

I don't know TweakUAC specifically, but the capability is there in Windows Vista today via group policy. It wouldn't be hard for somebody to configure that policy. That was the point of my post - that there are more options today on Windows Vista than just the on/off we have in the control panel.

Chris

re: The Windows 7 UAC Slider, and What You Can Do on Windows Vista Today

anony.muos — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:39:51 GMT

Isn't "Elevate without prompting" available today on Vista with TweakUAC?

re: The Windows 7 UAC Slider, and What You Can Do on Windows Vista Today

Mark Sowul — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:16:28 GMT

I had a similar issue with ATI FireGL drivers. It would only do it with my second monitor, but it would take a good 5 seconds because the monitor would go to standby and back on. It was just the cheapo one that came with my workstation so I ended up getting a newer nVidia card, and that was that.

But! Fast user switching still totally fubars anything on my second monitor. This is with both video cards. Doesn't really happen on my home machine though (different dual monitors; different video card but still nVidia). Sigh.

re: The Windows 7 UAC Slider, and What You Can Do on Windows Vista Today

Chris Jackson - MSFT — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:45:46 GMT

Hi Eric,

I can't really say much without a kernel debugger and a whole lot of time. When you are going to the secure desktop and you have DWM enabled, you're moving from rendering Direct3D9 surfaces to using just a 2D surface. Some drivers have been known not do this switch ... elegantly ... including sending the monitor a singnal to switch to an invalid mode.

Are there no more current drivers available?

Also, out of sheer curiosity (I honestly don't know the answer) - does it still happen if you set the theme to Vista Basic so you don't have to go from a DWM rendered desktop to a non-DWM rendered desktop? Since I don't have drivers that have a problem, I can't just play around with that here...

Thanks,

Chris

re: The Windows 7 UAC Slider, and What You Can Do on Windows Vista Today

Eric — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:16:02 GMT

Great information. Interesting note about the driver issues - in fact, the Intel drivers on my work desktop *still* have problems to this day - about 5% of the time my secondary monitor will shutoff when a UAC dialog comes up and refuse to come back.

Fortunately I was able to leave UAC (mostly) on by manipulating the secure desktop setting.

Any idea why secure desktop quickly turns off and on display (LCD panels, etc) when switching modes? Driver issue, or by design?