Personally I leave it switched on - the one positive is it is much less irritating than it was in Vista.-Carol Haynes
If you haven't cranked UAC to the maximum setting, you might as well almost just turn it off - unless Microsoft have been a-fixing things, it's pretty easy to turn it all the way off programmatically.
The only time I install an anti-malware app is when I suspect I've been too trusting to something I shouldn't have, or if I just want to make sure I've got a clean slate.-wreckedcarzz
That's too late - if you've already got a nasty bugger, anti-malware might not be able to detect it. Be proactive!
Anyway, as to what UAC does: it doesn't stop stuff from running on your computer; it prevents stuff from going form LUA (Limited User Account) privileges to full administrative privileges. Not all malware needs admin privs to be effective - but the stuff that's nastiest to detect & remove does. And of course there's been a few privilege escalation exploits in Windows, letting you bypass UAC. Needless to say, bugs like that have a pretty high fixing priority.
Thus, UAC isn't an end-all-be-all. It's a mitigating factor (just like Windows Firewall and Windows Defender, and the various kernel enhancements that been added from 2003-server until Winy), and you'll want as many mitigating factors as there is (within performance reasons, of course).
It's a pity that Microsoft hasn't been able to devise a better tool after all this time.-cyberdiva
It's a pity 3rd party developers are ***hats who don't want to follow official programming guidelines - if they did, we wouldn't need administrative privileges (and thus an UAC popup) nearly as often.
As for the ActiveWords problem, that's a bit curious. But one added part of security is restricting how programs can interact with eachother - there's all sorts of attacks you can do by messing with other applications, so you generally DON'T want a low-privilege application messing with a high-privilege one. Is DreamWeaver, by any chance, started with administrative privileges? Even if it isn't, try starting ActiveWords with administrative privileges.
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Your mileage will likely vary from mine.
But it's an idea that's been in my head for ages, thank you for letting me steam it out.
