Is it ever appropriate to disable UAC on Vista?

Maybe. Depends on your tolerance for UAC dialogs during the initial build of a Vista workstation.

Recently Vlad wrote an entry on his blog that got me in a pretty defensive position about UAC. He stated that:

"I have personally walked several people through the disabling of UAC."

On the surface I was vexed. How could such a competent geek do such a thing? I wanted to get Susan's 2x4 and show Vlad what I thought of his actions. Instead, I decided to ask him WHY he did such a thing, and what caused him to take such drastic action. I was glad I did.

He spoke of the fact that during the initial build of the workstation, installing drivers and application software was painful. He also commented that developers were always installing software, and as an end user experience... this wasn't a desired state. Hence why he disabled it.

I am of two minds. When initially building the machine I can understand wanting to disable UAC. If you trust the software you are installing, I could actually see where it would be desirable to speed things along. If the machine is in an isolated environment firewalled away from the rest of the Internet... go for it. Just remember to turn UAC on when you are done. Although, as someone who has installed a number of Vista machines now... its not that bad.

For the developers though... that's a different story. They SHOULD keep UAC on at all times. For a NUMBER of reasons. First off... maybe they will see how annoying their own software is if it wasn't designed to work in a least privileged environment :) Secondly... and more importantly... DEVELOPER'S ARE USERS as far as the IT resources are concerned. They SHOULDN'T been installing software hap-hazardly on corporate machines. That's what their test (virtual) machines are for. They should have to adhere to the same corporate security policy as everyone else... detailed for their particular role in the organization (assuming the policy supports the definition of roles). People SHOULDN'T be allowed to install software on the machines unless it is part of the duties they must perform. As such, the UAC prompt is a REMINDER of that. If the developer is going to override it... AND has authority to do so... they can enter their credentials and continue on.

UAC is a good thing. It might seem nice to do it old school 'sudo' like Unix environments, but globally disabling such security controls is a mistake if you ask me. Being prompted of all elevation requests help you to understand what apps are really doing. As 3rd party apps build their software for Vista we will see a reduction in the prompting as the applications will be written properly with least privilege. As someone who has run Vista for months now I can attest to the fact that I rarely see UAC prompts. I did during the initial install phase... but now that I am using the platform... I don't see it that much. And when I do, it's expected.

So don't turn UAC off. Instead educate your users on NOT installing software unless they absolutely need it. And if they DO need it to do their job... why wasn't it already cataloged as an information asset of the business and previously installed? Your IT asset catalog should define all software needed for a role's responsibilities in your organization, and you should be making sure you have backup media to ensure you can always reinstall it on a rebuild.

When set up properly, Vista's UAC isn't there to hinder a user's experience. Rather it is there to inform the user when they take action that requires higher privileges and may be against the policy of the organization. Don't lose that. Don't disable UAC.