Bob--
"I have investigated the program it keeps warning me about and decided that
it is fact something that I don't want to ever run."
Fair enough. But UAC isn't the way most people would do this and it raises
the question in my mind what/or who is making this "thing" run in the first
place They'd boot it off their box. Is someone sharing your box who has a
different opinion that matters of said program unamed? Why keep "a program"
that you now have ID'd as a program and not spyware or malicious on your box
taking up space if you don't want it?
I thought it was pretty on point. I knew you didn't want to disable UAC.
However you sure were vague about the program you said it "flagged" as
suspicious and this comes from nearly 2 years with Vista under my belt. I
didn't recommend disabling UAC. I don't recommend doing that.
I said:
" I think it depends on which progam you think is prompting you out of
theordinary and drilling down and seeing if it's safe and you're just seeing
normal UAC default behavior... Prompts for all kinds of programs do not
necessarily mean that they are spyware or malicious--that's UAC being UAC."
Once again why not name the program, and specifically the behavior of UAC
you say ID's it as "spyware or something." What precisely is UAC showing
you and what is the program?
Without knowing what the program is and what you see UAC saying about it,
it's hard to give intelligent advice.
Precisesly what in the world do you mean UAC "flagged a program" as
suspicious. You mean the prompts? It does that all the time. What (you
didn't say) makes you think that UAC flagged a particular program as
suspicious? What did it do that was unique that distinguishes what it does
with other programs? What is the program?
You said:
"There is some piece of spyware or something on my computerand User Account
Control is frequently asking me whether I want to run." UAC, again, again,
does that all the time. MSFT got a ton of feedback in the vein of the
Apple commercial where the guy couldn't make a move without asking security,
and they cut the UAC prompts but they still cause problems for a lot of
people. Many of us said they would; they don't for me.
1) How do you know there is spyware on your box? What does UAC tell you
that makes you know? UAC is not a spyware detector. What happens when your
run programs like Defender or Ad Aware that are made to detect spyware?
What happens when you run a viral scan? I'm particularly interested to know
how UAC is IDing something as "spyware or something" on your box, because
I've not seen it do *that on my boxes or hundreds of others.
2) Again you don't need to disable UAC. I think that's bad practice.
3) When I have a program I don't want to run on Windows, whether it's
Windows 3.0 or Vista, I uninstall it, or I don't run it. If the program is
one that is trying to run on its own, then again what is the specific
program. If in fact you "have investigated the program it keeps warning me
about and decided that it is fact something that I don't want to ever run.",
fine.
1) Who put the program on the box in the first place?
2) 3rd Time what is it, because I suspect you may be talking about something
that is a normal Windows app but I don't know because you haven't opted to
name it.
3) If you tell me what the program is I'll let you know what it does, and
how to uninstall it so it won't run.
4) Why would anyone keep a "program" on their computer they decide they
don't ever want to run? It takes up space. If it's spyware or malicious,
remove it or quarantine it with the appropriate app.
I recommend you download and run Windows One Care (from MSFT) (free for 90
days) which contains its own spyware component--you could then turn Defender
off which ships with Vista. One care will scan for spyware and malicious
scripts, i.e. Viruses, Worms, Blended Threats and I've been using it since
2004 and I like the way it works a lot. It's less UAC intensive than
Norton, and it takes up less space and updates seamlessly in the background.
It has a fairly sophisticated firewall.
http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/purchase/default.htm
I'd like to help if I knew more about the program, but again if you don't
want it, UAC is not the best practices way to stop it. If you don't want it
to run, why would it be running without you or someone making ir run?
To me that's a very on point question. I also offered you a free UAC
tweaker that can zero in on an individual "program", but if I don't want a
program/app to run and it's not an intrinsic part of Windows, I kick it to
the curb off the box.
Good luck,
CH
.