How NOT to use Windows Vista

Millions of lines of code and hundreds of thousands man-hours have gone into the making of Windows Vista. Microsoft claims it to be the most secure operating system ever. With all the security features, controls and safety nets built into it, one would be inclined to believe it. However, as they say too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, same is true with Windows Vista. With so many security controls and warning, you would tend to just ignore those warning as routine or worse disable it all together.

Microsoft has included security features in Windows Vista that are intended to protect the users from themselves like the User Access Control (UAC), Data Execution Protection (DEP), protected mode browsing in Internet Explorer etc. However power users, administrators or even normal users may get irritated by that level of protection and baby sitting and may decide to turn it off altogether. I found this very illuminating article on http://www.computerworld.com website. This article lists down steps to disable all these protective measures and also points to another article which shows you how to uncover and use the REAL administrator account. Microsoft has hidden and disabled the builtin administrator account which was a given in previous version of Windows.

Having said that security research company Sophos has already discovered malware for Windows Vista in wild and has predicted more in the coming days as Windows Vista will be deployed widespread. However, security researchers also say that the potential for these malware to cause major damage will be limited because of the security features included in Windows Vista as it by default blocks such behaviour. Taking these two different stories in the same context is very important. The first one shows you how to disable the built-in security features to make it more user friendly and the second clearly shows the pitfalls in doing so.

I would strongly discourage you from disabling the security features if you are planning to do so or were wondering whether there is a way where you could get around these annoyances.