UAC useless after Explorer restarts

As stated in the title of this post, Windows Vista UAC does not work anymore after the Explorer (process: explorer.exe) restarts-albeit in a certain way.

I have noticed this behavior a few months ago but remember to talk about it just now. My Explorer was churning half of my CPU resources at that time, so I restarted it. I did it from Process Explorer (Sysinternals Process Explorer is a better alternative to Windows Task Manager) which has been granted "admin" privileges when it was launched. When, after restarting Explorer, I opened Registry Editor, Auslogics Disk Defrag and Device Manager, there were no UAC prompts to allow these processes to run. It was a strange thing to me; I didn't disabled the UAC and even if I did, it would take one restart to make such a drastic change in security.

A look at the process hierarchy hinted that it must have something to do with Explorer inheriting the rights from Process Explorer. I am not very familiar with how processes are handled by Windows, but it's obviously apparent that the child processes are inheriting properties from the parent process. Now that Explorer has obtained the privilege, its child processes, the processes launched from Desktop, Start Menu, or Run command, will also inherit the "admin" privilege by default even with UAC turned on.

What's the matter with this? This is the way it works by design. But, what if someone who is moderately tech savvy-know enough tools to tweak around but does not know enough to properly protect himself/herself from malwares-gets to use Process Explorer (which asks for the "admin" privilege at the launch) and restarts Explorer knowingly or by mistake or by playful habit? This is the end of UAC protection for him/her. Launching any program will not result in UAC prompt and the Internet Explorer will no longer run in Protected Mode. This is the time when a plethora of malwares can start to exert their power, and the user will be left with thinking why his/her computer is infected even when UAC is turned on and wondering how these malwares escaped the UAC; in worst case, the user will probably think UAC is nuts and will turn it off which exposes him/her even more.

In my opinion, this should NOT happen when the UAC is turned on. I know that it is by design of processes in Windows NT. Anyhow, when the UAC is turned on, Microsoft should enforce that Explorer starts or restarts with the default privileges ("non-admin" privilege) or parameters irregardless of the state of the parent process. I am not sure how hard it is to make this change but I will be very glad if Explorer is made to start with the preset parameters instead of inheriting them from the parent.

In terms of severity and impact, this is a High severity and Medium impact case.

Live QnA Redesign

Microsoft has redesigned the Live QnA page. The new page is apparently more appealing to the eyes.

It also features a tag cloud to browse the questions (and the answers).

I hope Microsoft will move to standardize its web service pages. So far the UI has been very unattractive and not intuitive and is not consistent across all products.

Some Windows Fun Videos

This first video, I got from Dr. Ronald Yap who wanted us to be happy watching some fun stuffs after his excruciating final exam.

This second video is unreal but it's fun to see how much people want or feel a need to bash Microsoft and Windows Vista. (On a side note, I can't agree with most of Vista bashing after getting to use it for 1+ year.)

Windows XP SP3 Download

Windows XP SP3 was released on 29 April to the public and is now available for download at the following link.

Windows XP SP3 English

IE8 Beta1 Available to Download

Microsoft has been developing IE8 for some time and it's now time to release IE8 Beta1 to the public. It's live as of this writing now. If you would like to take a glance at its new features, just grab your copy here. Fortunately, Windows XP users are not left behind in IE8 release. (On an unrelated note, I don't think Windows Media Player next version will continue to support XP.)

Technorati Tag: IE8

Google Not Doing Well

Google stocks aren't doing well lately. They have been falling and now the below-expectation Q4 earnings and the Microsoft-Yahoo merger seem to make the situation even worse for Google. Now the stock has fallen below 500 for the first time in nearly six months.


Meanwhile, Google released a very harsh article about Microsoft's bid for Yahoo. In the blog post, Google referred to the bid as hostile and accused Microsoft of trying to monopolize the internet. Of course the internet is what keeps Google going and they wouldn't want it to be monopolized by their biggest opponent. However, if we look at the Search market, we wouldn't disagree that Google itself is creating a monopoly-like situation (you don't have to think hard; just think about when you say your friend, "Google it.") and is aggressively fighting against anyone who wants some share of the market.

Whether Google really doesn't want Microsoft to acquire Yahoo or Google is just playing a game to force Microsoft to spend more on Yahoo and make them have a hard time financially, we will have to wait and see.

Technorati Tag: Google

BSOD during Vista x64 Boot Process

I recently upgraded to 4GB of RAM, but my 32-bit Vista OS only detects 3.25GB since my graphics card is taking a considerable amount of address space; in fact, all 32-bit Windows can and will only detect that same amount.

Having some capable hardware, I wanted to give Vista x64 a try on my machine. The installation process was OK until it restarted for the first time. I was greeted with a BSOD and the installation halted. I reset the computer and tried resuming the installation and it went to the final stage. But, again when it restarted, the BSOD came up again during the boot process (while the Vista progress bar is moving).


I tried testing my RAM which took pretty long. But, it was no use. There was no problem with my RAM, yet the boot process wouldn't go pass the BSOD. I had no choice but to reinstall back the 32-bit version. I was pretty much disappointed since my Vista x64 saga ended up with only painful fingertips from removing and reinstalling the RAM modules.

I found out on the next day that it was Microsoft fault in Vista x64 that caused this problem. This KB article from Microsoft states that if any of the options below are true:

• The computer uses more than 3 GB of RAM.
  
• The computer uses a storage system that is running the Storport miniport driver.
  
• The computer uses a controller that uses 32-bit direct memory access (DMA).
  

The problem was that I was installing Vista x64 on a machine with 4GB RAM. So, I solved it by removing 2GB of RAM and installing the OS with 2GB. When it was up (yes, the installation finished without any problem), I installed this fix which ridiculously requires validation (I don't have problem with validation but I can't be bothered by it when I am in trouble). After the fix, I installed back the 2GB and I didn't see any BSOD now, at least until now.

What's the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit? So far I see no difference with the only exception that the 64-bit version can detect all my physical RAM. And the 64-bit version consumes more RAM than its 32-bit counterpart since it keeps both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of DLL in memory.

Technorati Tag: Vista x64

SP1 time for Vista and Office 2007

Microsoft has released the SP1's for Windows Vista and Office 2007.

For Office, you can get it here.
For Vista, visit here.

I have installed Office 2007 SP1. I didn't notice any new feature. But, the performance improved generally, and especially for Outlook 2007.

For Vista, I am still waiting for the download to finish; my network is something wrong these days. But, if you have a chance, install it. It will improve the file copying dramatically; Vista file copying has been the center of attention for the critics and it has actually shown me that it's gonna take 37,000 days to finish copying a bunch of files.

Also, with Vista SP1, the WGA check will release its tight grip on users. If you forgot to activate your copy of Windows, it will no longer limit you to just one hour's log in and access IE only. That was way too annoying and it too happened to me once; I installed it as a test and never get to use it until after one and a half month later. Then all I could see was "nothing" and I could only use IE. Damn!

Please note though that Vista SP1 RC is a time limited version and you will have to uninstall it before you could install the RTM.

Technorati Tag: Vista, Office 2007

Vista Freezessssss....

Does anyone have any problem with Vista freezing for no reason with the HDD access led being busy? Apparently, there was no read or write to the HDD recorded when I check the log after Vista got out of the intermittent freeze. When it freezes, it does so for about 15 to 30 seconds; when it comes back, it is as though nothing had happened and everything works smoothly, with no CPU surge or HDD access detected.

Also, the freeze does not occur so frequently; it comes once in a while but it is very annoying.

There have been much talking about the problem but so far I have seen no clear solution or fix for it yet. If you know why, please leave your comment...

By the way, the score for my main computer is here. As you can see, it can't be due to low spec.

Thanks.

Technorati Tag: Vista

MS Error Rerport Won't Care Google Desktop

Just found out that Vista Error Report had automatically put Google Desktop entries under "Block List" and won't allow me to remove these entries. I remember I never did that. Weird!

Technorati Tag: Vista

Windows Live Listas

Windows Live Labs released a list sharing service, named Listas. You can create any list—to do, shopping, meeting agenda—and keep them private, share with your friends or put it on the community.


Alone, it doesn't seem very powerful, considering the overhead of having to visit its own dedicated web site and create lists there. But, if Microsoft finds a way to integrate it into other services and products, Listas could prove a very useful tool, for instance, brain-storming through email.

Justin

Technorati Tag: Listas

Office Live Workspace

You can now pre-register for Microsoft Office Live Workspace where you can store Microsoft Office files. As shown on the web page, the number of files is virtually not limited (1000+). You can also share you files and edit them online too.

This is gonna be a great move by Microsoft to fight Google's Docs Suite which recently released a Presentation tool which didn't cause much hype on the net, being a rudimentary and indifferent.

Until then...

Justin

Technorati Tag: Microsoft Office

Windows Live Translator

Microsoft is testing Live Translator which can be accessed through: translate.live.com or translator.live.com. The interface is clean and maintain the consistent looks of Windows Live services—Live Spaces and Live Mail, for example. (Side note: I hate that looks! It doesn't make sense to put a large banner above the Windows Live navigation bar. The banner takes a lot of space and it doesn't serve the users. Something without a use should disappear; it does in evolution though.)

Below I did a simple translation and compared the results with those from Google Translate. It seems like Google's translation is better but to confirm it needs a lot more testings of course.

1) How are you, without ?



2) How are you?



Until then...

Justin

Technorati Tag: Live Translator

Microsoft Released New Search Engine Tafiti

Microsoft has released a new search engine called Tafiti which is powered by their Live Search and the Silverlight technology. Using Silverlight (which is Microsoft's answer to Flash), Microsoft makes the interface very decorated, a moved recently started by Ask.com. But there is no option to change the theme of the search interface yet.


The obvious new features of Tafiti are Save search result, Search term history, a Treeview of search results and a graphical search category.


You can label the saved search results and recall them when you need. You don't have to log in to save the search results, but if you clear your cookies, the saved results may disappear. There are five place holders and each of them can keep more than one search result.


The Search term history feature keeps a stack of your search terms so that you can access them back later. But, unlike a list, this stack doesn't allow you to go to any search term in any order. It is a stack—a last-in-first-out queue. So, if you searched 1)Google 2)Microsoft 3)Yahoo, you can go back to Microsoft but not to Google from your Yahoo search result page.


Tafiti also gives you a way to visualize the search results in a Treeview. But, it's too cluttered to be useful and readable.


There is also a graphical view of the Search categories each of which has distinct interface for showing the results. For example, the News search shows the results in a format akin to that of the newspaper.

Overall, Tafiti is a UI-enriched version of Windows Live Search, and the performance is unacceptably slow and it requires you to install Silverlight to use it.

This video takes you through the various features of Tafiti:

Until then...

Justin

Technorati Tag: Microsoft

Windows Vista Updates

Microsoft released two updates for Windows Vista. They are meant to improve reliability and performance of the Vista system dramatically.

Although they are not yet on Windows Update, you can download them at the links below (require Validation) and install manually.

Update 1 (64bit here)
Update 2 (64bit here)

Until then...

Justin

Technorati Tag: Vista

Windows Live Folders is now SkyDrive

Microsoft Live Folder is now open as SkyDrive beta. Although there was no thumbnail view in Live Folder, SkyDrive now shows thumbnail preview of pictures. But, there is no flash player for WMA and MP3 files (DivShare has it).


Storage capacity has not increased from 500MB yet.

Technorati Tag: SkyDrive, Online Storage

Windows Live Folders Now Open

Microsoft has finally opened up Windows Live Folder to the public beta testing after releasing it to a limited beta test a few months ago.


The service gives you 500MB of online storage and by default, you will have three main folders: one for yourself, one for sharing with friends and one for public access.

It is still not up to the expectations. There are quite a number of stupid things about this Live Folder:

First, there is no upload indicator, so you don't know how much of your files have been uploaded and at what rate; what you see instead is a flash object where you can play with a bouncing ball with your mouse if you are bored while waiting for the uploading.

Second, after uploading a JPG file, I was hoping that I will see a nice preview of it when I clicked on it. But, what I saw was just a default icon for an image file and there is no way to preview the pictures before downloading them. Also there is no way to create a picture gallery or a slide show of the pictures uploaded.


In fact, there is no preview option for whatsoever file you upload, be they MP3, WMA or Doc. You will nonetheless see "Preview" when you hover your mouse on the icon of the file but you will have to download in order to preview it. Downloading the full file is not at all previewing, however.

Third, sharing is not what it initially seems like to be. You have a public folder but there is no public address for that folder. That means you can't just share your public folder. You are confined to the file level sharing only even if you put your file inside the Public Folder.

One good thing about sharing is you can set who can download your file so that only your friends that you selected can see and download it. This is different from setting a password to the file or folder containing it and giving that password and the file link to your friend to let him/her download it.

MediaFire and DivShare, file hosting sites, have folder level sharing but they don't have a better way to share a file with some particular friends only.

Last but not least, there is no storage limit for other file hosting services which you can pretty much use like Live Folder. MediaFire limits maximum file size to 100MB while DivShare raises it up to 200MB. Both of them do not have maximum storage limit. But, in Live Folder, the maximum file size is just half of that of MediaFire and if all your files are of maximum size allowed, then you can only upload a maximum of 10 files of them before your quota is reached.

Until then...

Justin

Technorati Tag: Live Folder, MediaFire, DivShare

Why Internet Explorer Can't Compete with Firefox

With Internet Explorer 7 for Vista and XP, Microsoft entered the tabbed-browser war which is mainly dominated by Firefox. Microsoft gave the users some tabbed browsing capabilities, a phishing filter and a cleaner look (which indeed confused old users).

But, Microsoft failed to realize that the reason why Firefox is very popular is not simply the phishing filter and tabbed browsing but is the extensibility of the browsers with Add-ons. There is somehow a way to download and install Add-ons for IE but the way it is done is terribly horrible. There is no variety and there is most importantly no consistent way to install the Add-ons.

Linked here is an article on why those Add-ons for IE really suck. It's a pretty good article and Microsoft should learn from it to improve the IE7 experience. For a quick view, below is the top ten reasons that the article points out why IE Add-ons suck:

1. Little variety
   
2. Poor classification
   
3. No standard installation method
   
4. The Add-Ons are hosted on third party sites
   
5. Some Add-Ons cannot be uninstalled
   
6. Some Add-Ons have no utility whatsoever
   
7. You have to pay for the good Add-Ons
   
8. Some Add-Ons don't work
   
9. Some Add-ons are not Add-Ons but standalone applications
   
10. Some of the Add-Ons are a SECURITY RISK!!
    

On an unrelated note, the reason, I believe, why IE counts a large percentage on browsers statistics is that it comes pre-installed on Windows and the people who use public computers with only Internet Explorer have no choice but to use it even though it sucks a lot.

Until then...

Justin

PS: I wonder what Microsoft heard from the users when they said "we heard you" (from the screen shot above).

Technorati Tag: Internet Explorer

Windows Registry Backup

There are many Windows tweaks and fixes which involves editing the registry. More often than not, they warn or remind you to backup your registry before making any changes to it while they only give instruction on how to edit or create new registry entry (entries) to get a desired effect in Windows.

This post deals with a quick and easy way to back up the registry in Windows and assumes that you will use Windows Registry Editor which can be run by going to Start > Run and typing regedit and then clicking OK.



When you are in Windows Registry Editor, you can back up the registry in two ways: Full and Selective. To back up all your registry which can be quite large, select the My Computer on the left pane as shown in the image. Then select File > Export.... You will be prompted to save the registry back up file in .reg format. Type a name to save your file and click Save. Your whole registry information will be saved to that file and if you ever need to restore back you registry, double-clicking on that file will be all you need to do.


To back up just a key in the registry, you will need to navigate to that key in the left pane and select it. For example, to back up the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Device Installer, go to that key and select it as shown in the picture. Then go to File > Export... just as you did for the first method. Type a file name and save it. This will back up only the selective key that you wish to back up and is the typical method to do the backup before doing changes to your registry.

Until then...

Justin

Technorati Tag: Microsoft,Windows, Registry

Vista Basic and Standard - My Frustration

I can understand that Microsoft only gives the ugly interface to Vista Home Basic edition users. But, it seems unfair that Microsoft also gives that same ugly interface to those who use other Vista editions but without the graphic requirement to run Aero. There's Vista Standard interface for those who can run Aero but disable the transparency effect (but this Vista Standard UI is rendered by hardware).


I think Microsoft can give something similar to Vista Standard UI (rendered by software) to those who use non-Home-Basic editions but cannot run Aero. I can see that Microsoft shows the Vista Standard UI-like interface during the Windows installation on my computer, but I can only see the ugly interface after the installation. I use Vista Business edition and the only "defect" is my Intel GMA 900 which cannot run Aero.


If Microsoft can show Vista Standard UI during installation on my computer, why can't they show it instead of the ugly interface?

Until then...

Justin

Technorati Tag: Microsoft, Vista