1. Stick With Microsoft Security Essentials

Gone are the days you have to shell out money for computer security just to get rid of a couple of viruses every year. For its customers, Microsoft already offers an application called “Microsoft Security Essentials“. It doesn’t come as part of your Windows installation, but it’s been around, and it’s been free for a very long time. You can download it if you run Windows Vista (32 or 64 bit) or later.

Microsoft’s Security Essentials software keeps you updated with its own virus definitions and helps you combat even the most complex infections. An additional bonus to install MSE is that it doesn’t take a whole lot of resources from your computer, like other “bloatware” anti-virus solutions do.

Go ahead and download MSE from here.

2. Windows Firewall Is as Competent as Any Other Firewall

It’s become a new fad lately to criticize every product Microsoft comes up with. While some of the complaints are well-merited, people often avoid using Windows Firewall because they hear it won’t really protect them. In reality, you can configure the firewall to do practically anything any other firewall can do. Contrary to many beliefs, Windows Firewall has the possibility to block outbound connections coming from a malicious application and monitor your network for anything else:

It’s all about searching. You can get to this window by clicking “Advanced settings” when you reach Windows Firewall settings in the control panel. There’s no reason anyone shouldn’t be able to have a secure system running solely with Windows Firewall. Honestly, though, configuring outbound blocks doesn’t really help you stop anything. If malware is making outbound connections through your computer, you should really consider getting rid of the malware. Blocking the malware’s access to the Internet doesn’t really stop it from hogging your computer’s resources.

On the other hand, you should really keep an eye on inbound connections, which often try to hook onto your Internet line and exploit your computer’s vulnerabilities. We can speculate as much as we want, but having Windows Firewall running on your computer is no different than using iptables on Linux. Both are very secure and difficult to exploit.

3. Download Windows Updates

Don’t listen to the conspiracy theorists saying that Microsoft Windows Update is an evil service that attempts to control your computer. While they might be right about the “control” part, it’s not like you’re going to suddenly see that you can’t go to a website because Microsoft is trying to “protect” you. The only thing that can happen is that they’ll pull an application from your system if it violates their policies, and that’s not going to happen until Windows 8 comes out. Still, they don’t need Windows Update to do that.

Downloading your updates is as important as running a firewall and keeping an up-to-date virus database. In fact, some malware has been rendered useless (like the “Conficker” virus) within a short while, when Microsoft patched up a vulnerability in Windows that it released as an update. People who refuse to use Windows Update might scoff at this, but it’s no laughing matter when you consider that many people also said that smoking isn’t bad for you.

It’s true that sometimes Windows Update might accidentally detect your Windows installation as counterfeit, but you can always ring up Microsoft on this. They’re always glad to assist you should anything go wrong on their end.

Are you annoyed by Windows Update forcing your computer to restart all the time? This isn’t an issue, as you can always configure it not to auto-restart after the update.

4. Disable UAC & Stop Downloading Suspicious Files

There’s a certain something that Microsoft should have never included in Windows: User Account Control. This intervention isn’t necessary in most systems, and certainly shouldn’t appear in home PCs. UAC basically is the pop-up that comes up whenever your computer wants to make sure you’re running an application on your own accord.  It looks something like this:

To disable it, read this article, which teaches you how to disable it under the “Disabling UAC” section.

Aside from disabling UAC, you can keep your computer secure using prevention. Download only from familiar sources and don’t download suspicious files. It only requires common sense. If someone links to a “.exe” file and says it’s a picture, don’t approach it. Someone links you to a page where you must log in to a website you’re already logged into? Don’t go to that page! These are simple and common tactics of fooling people, but as you grow more aware of what’s going on, you might prevent a major system catastrophe.

If you have a file you want to download and don’t know whether to trust it or not, upload it to VirusTotal and let its results tell you about it. The website runs the file you just downloaded through a ton of different anti-virus solutions and lets you know what each of them picks up. A few false positives might appear, but if many of the anti-virus solutions say that it’s an infected file, you’d best steer clear from it.

Following all this advice will help you thwart most common attacks, and even some rare ones, without ever having to pay for third-party software. If you have more ideas, throw them at us in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you!

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1. People Click “Yes”

Even if there’s a ton of text in bold on the screen, your average home user will click “Yes” if the dialog keeps repeating itself. This is otherwise known as a reflex, and develops in the act of repetition. Let’s face it. The majority of applications on your computer are safe. If 98% of applications that open in a computer are safe, the other 2% might go unpunished as the end user clicks “Yes” every single time the annoying dialog appears. Would you really take the time to read 200 dialogs in an 8 hour day, if you’re not paid to read them? Add all this to the fact that the “Yes” button isn’t labeled “Yes,” but “Continue” – a word the mind is less likely to want to process when it’s in a hurry.

2. People Are Smug/Annoyed

This reason is much less about why UAC doesn’t work and more about what people do as a result of being annoyed. Some high-end users will disable UAC manually, and then teach their less-versed friends how to do it. These naive friends will probably forget that UAC is a security feature and consider it more an annoyance, so they’ll disable it as soon as they learn how to. Disabling UAC eventually will put them at risk for certain vulnerabilities Microsoft didn’t compensate for if the users don’t have an anti-virus application installed. The ball keeps rolling and the picture isn’t pretty.

3. Malware Doesn’t Normally Knock on The Door

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of being infected while UAC is on, you know the truth. UAC will not protect you from malware, since there are tons of different ways to call the Windows function library (WinAPI) without having to actually go through the feature’s screening process. The simplest method that malware uses to bypass the supposed security feature involves acting as an innocent application then writing all of the “bad stuff” to your AppData folder, which isn’t touched by UAC. Of course, there are other ways to bypass UAC, but I won’t discuss them for the sake of not giving people ideas.

4. Not Everyone Knows It’s Malware

It’s not like malware has an evil vampire face or Jolly Roger icon on it for you to tell what’s what. Most people will look at something like “Internet Optimizer” as an innocent application name and cilck “Confirm” in the UAC dialog if they even read the text on it. The malware infects the computer and it’s a done deal. Windows has no way of telling you, “Hey, look at this! We think it’s malware!” Knowing this, it’s difficult for someone to ever benefit from UAC.

Conclusion

While the intention of UAC is good, it often gives people a false sense of security, or worse, causes annoyance to everyone. We don’t advise you to turn off UAC completely, but don’t ever assume this is going to protect you if you are going to click the “Continue” button without thinking through the consequences.

What’ do you say? Do you think the UAC is really useful?

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This is how it can be done to selectively disable UAC prompt for certain applications.

Click on the “Start” menu. Right click on the “Computer” entry and select “Manage”.

You will see the Computer Management window. On the left pane, select the “Task Scheduler”. On the right pane, select “Create Task”.

Enter a name for the new task. At the bottom, check the box “Run with highest privilege”.

Next, click on the “Actions” tab. Click the “New” button.

In the Program/Script field, browse and select the application that you want to bypass the UAC prompt (in this case – CCleaner). Once done, click OK.

Close your Computer Management window.

On your desktop, click “New -> Shortcut”.

In the new window that pop up, type the following:

schtasks.exe /run /tn "TaskName"

Replace the “TaskName” with the new task that you have just created. For example, in my case, I will type schtasks.exe /run /tn “CCleaner” into the field.

Give your shortcut a new name and click Finish.

That it. Whenever you click the shortcut to launch your application, the UAC will not prompt again.

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To achieve the goal that we have in mind, we need to alter the Manifest File of the app which contains the useful information that provides the privileges needed by the app concerned & its UI Interaction of the app.

Those are the three types of privileges that can be stored in the Manifest File.

• requireAdministrator – Run the app as administrator.
• asInvoker – Run with same privilege as that of the parent process.
• highestAvailable – Run with highest possible privilege available to user.

Ok that is enough with the geeky talk, let us proceed to the HOW TO section which tells us how to perform the task.

1. Download Vista UAC Maker.

2. Run the Utility. Now using the Select… button browse & locate the app or program executable file.

3. Add some words in the Project Description field for future reference.

4. In the Required Privilege Level drop-down list select the privilege. The default is  [requireAdministrator], but you can change it to whichever is suitable for the application.

5. In the last step where you are asked “Does your application interacts with high privilege windows on desktop?”, check the Yes box only if your app interacts with high privilege apps on UI level in Vista else leave it as No.

That’s it.

Now the configured app is compatible with Windows Vista as well as Windows 7 too. This works great in cases where you need to use a particular app meant for XP to be sound & working in Vista & Windows 7. Hope that helps. Share your experiences by putting in your valuable comments.

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No doubt the Vista User Account Control (UAC) is the single biggest irritation in the whole operating system, but if you are thinking of turning it off altogether, you better think twice. UAC is a security feature that can help prevent unauthorized changes to your computer. By turning it off, you will lose all protection and put yourself in great risk of virus and malware attack. Hopefully, you have not forgotten that Windows has the most number of virus attack in the World.

A better way to deal with the UAC is to tweak it such that it continues to run in the background without popping out the annoying prompt every few seconds. Here are four software that you can use to make your UAC less annoying without compromising your security.

TweakUAC

TweakUAC is a simple tool that allows you to switch your UAC to quiet mode. In other word, it allows you to easily disable the UAC without having to restart the computer. In the quiet mode, you will be elevated to the adminisrator privilege and there won’t be any annoying prompts that pop up every few seconds. This mode is ideal when you need to perform some administrator tasks such as installing/uninstalling applications, cleaning up your system, moving files around and etc.

There is no installation required for TweakUAC. You simply double click on the application to run it. Whenever you are done with your stuff, just run the application again to turn the UAC back on. A neat and simple tool that doesn’t take up much memory and space.

Smart UAC

What SmartUAC does is to replace the UAC with a more powerful and intelligent user control. After the installation, the standard UAC will be disabled and the SmartUAC will take control of the system. In the event where there are potential threats occur, the SmartUAC prompts will appear rather than the standard UAC popup. The difference between the two prompts is that you can get SmartUAC to remember your selection so that it can automatically handle the same event next time it occurs. The longer you use SmartUAC, the less popup you will see.

In addition, SmartUAC also runs in the background and scan the programs for any malicious threat. When such threat is found, a Red Alert prompt will appear to inform you of the potential danger. Similarly, you can pick the course of action for SmartUAC to handle for future event.

Norton User Account Control tool

Unlike SmartUAc, the Norton User Account Control tool will replace only parts of the standard UAC. It will continue to utilize the UAC security feature while providing a more informative and user-friendly interface. When a standard UAC prompt appears, it only inform you of the program that is running. It does not recommend any action or remember your choice. Norton UAC tool is different in such that it displays the security information (signature information of the application) and prompts recommendations based on an assessment on the user-action. There is also a “remember me” feature that allows users to suppress future prompts from the same action.

As can be seen, Norton UAC tool collects user input and is able to make its own assessment without any unnecessary prompts. This is definitely a better and less annoying way than the standard UAC to manage your system.

UAC Snooze

As its name implies, UAC Snooze allows you to temporary stop UAC prompts for a user-defined amount of time and then automatically turn it on once the time is up. During this time, you will be granted elevated privileges so that you can perform all your administrator tasks. The snooze can be set by simply clicking the icon on the system tray.

This is a simple tool that allows you to do your stuff without the annoying UAC prompt. In case you forgot to turn it back on after you are done, the snooze function will come in handy.

UAC Snooze comes with a 30 days trial period after which it costs $5 to register.

How do you deal with the annoying UAC?

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