Tweak Manager: The Right Tool For the Job?

One of the large new features in Vista is the User Account Control (UAC). Microsoft introduced UAC to reduce the possibility of application-based attacks to users' systems.

Many security attacks come through malware. Sometimes this malware is hidden in other software that appears legit. UAC in Vista, by default, will force all applications to run in "standard" user mode. Standard user mode limits the things that can be done and OS settings that can be changed by that application.

The downside to this is that the limitation sometimes causes programs to fail to function correctly, especially programs that were written without taking UAC into consideration, such as older apps. One example of this is Adobe Acrobat Reader. When Vista was first released, I was unable to install Adobe Acrobat Reader because my "standard" user did not have access to write to an obscure TEMP folder Adobe was trying to use during installation.

This screen gives you control over how UAC works and the prompts that you see (or don't see) as applications try to access these newly restricted areas of the OS.