The dialog, by default, pops up on a "secure desktop". It's separate from the desktop you normally work on, and basically it means anything that appears on this desktop cannot be seen or, more importantly, manipulated from the "normal" desktop. Thus any input on dialogs in the secure desktop must come from the user. At least that's the idea.
Incidentally, Remote Desktop can manipulate the secure desktop (I guess it'd have to be able to). And it conveniently breaks VNC (IIRC it disconnects if a UAC prompt pops up and you can't reconnect until you take care of the prompt locally.
I used two ext2 drivers for Windows under Vista or 7. They run in the kernel as filesystem drivers and thus do not need to present UAC dialogs. Only for the control panels where you change the drive letter mounts... but those don't need to run on startup.
UAC is supposed to limit the damage caused by running malware... for example, it would be unable to write to system folders or Program Files, it would be unable to set itself to start up globally (only for the specific user, unless there is already a global start up item that points to an EXE it can write to, outside of the system files), and it would be unable to write to HKLM or install or manipulate services or drivers.
Of course in the default configuration UAC can be easily disabled by the malware easily allowing all these things, like on XP.
You can interact with UAC prompts remotely with Remote Desktop.
You can also deactivate the "secure desktop" if you're finding its more trouble than its worth (just be sure you understand the risks in doing so). Google around for the Group Policy setting (for "expensive" Vistas) or the direct registry hack (for every Vista).
Actually in the Stargate universe currently (end of Season 5) the humans of Earth have multiple ZPMs. Spoilers ahead if you haven't seen the last episode of Season 5 yet.
.
.
.
Two were taken back to the Milky Way after the Replicators occupying Atlantis back in Season 3 were destroyed. One of those was put aboard the Odyssey to help give them a chance against the Ori. It's never again mentioned but it's likely still there. In addition I find it interesting that at the time of the last Atlantis episode the Odyssey is on a super-duper top-secret mission... maybe that's the next SG-1 movie? Though I thought they were gonna spice up the SG-1 pilot for that, but I can take an original picture instead.:)
The other ZPM was used to power the Ancient drone chair on earth. The chair was destroyed but the ZPM was not mentioned. I guess the writers are free to either write it off as being destroyed or having the SGC/IOA use it somewhere else.
Yeah I was thinking this. A digital cert on a file is meant to help ensure the file has not been modified (usually to help spot a viral infection).
Although the cert expiring shouldn't keep it from running, I'm guessing that's a built-in mechanism in the game... for like you said, to prevent cheating. Though a cheater who can hex edit the game can probably also disable the cert check.
You probably should update this backup whenever a) Steam or one of its games has an update or b) you purchase a new game on Steam. If you don't do it for a), the out of date blob file might force it to need to connect to the Internet to update the file. If you don't do it for b) you won't be able to access your new game because the blob file doesn't include your purchase data for that game.
You do realize the disc copies require Steam too, right?
In any event I have had similar problems with Steam but fortunately they only happen occasionally, and I prefer to blame my ISP who is the true source of the problem anyways. Valve has since fixed the Offline but (but I haven't been bothered to check).
Except your car comes with all the features, it's just that they disable the ones you didn't pay for, and call the cops on you if you get them working by yourself.
(The Vista/7 DVD has the same content for all versions, your product key controls which version is installed. Thus if you choose to skip key entry at install time, it has to ask you which version you want to install.)
Ah, but the fact that only N% of their user base opted to install the extension is a statistic in and of itself and would be factored in to any conclusions.
I had to turn off SQM, it was causing Windows Installer to crash on Windows 7 when I tried to install UpdateStar. Didn't even get far enough to log anything, but thankfully Process Monitor helped me figure it out.
So apparently the Service Quality Monitoring is degrading the service quality, and then monitoring it. I don't think that's very useful, personally.
Try and figure out though how it is being "slow"... is it CPU or disk activity or memory or what? Identify what is wrong with Task Manager and you will be much closer to fixing it.
If its coming from random processes... injecteD DLLs live in all processes and thus bugs in them can appear in any random process since the DLL is present in all of them. My personal example is WindowBlinds, which has had some compatibility problems... Visual Studio soared in CPU usage while idle, the last time I used it. A while ago there was a problem where Google Desktop would eat up memory until it crashed if Windowblinds was in use on the system. Use autoruns to check for such DLLs and disable any that belong to apps you don't use, and temporarily disable apps that you are using (such as Windowblinds).
The disk check idea earlier in the page is a good idea too.
As for ideas it might be automatic defragmenting, I looked into the way defragmenting works on NT a while ago to try and figure out if having files open is still a no-no when defragmenting a drive (it's not, the clusters can still be moved, yay) and I found out Vista's defragmenting task is low-priority process and IO... meaning it can't be the cause, as it will defer to anything else on the system that needs process or IO time. You wouldn't notice it running.
FYI DiskMon and FileMon have been superseded by ProcMon. I used it the other day because there were pinned items on my Start Menu I couldn't delete, so a simple filter for RegWriteValue when I pinned or unpinned something and I was able to find where the list lived and wiped it.
Actually in Vista (and XP SP3, or is it 2?) Autorun by default shows a dialog asking you what you want to do with the software, it doesn't run anything on the device/CD unless you explicitly select that option.
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The dialog, by default, pops up on a "secure desktop". It's separate from the desktop you normally work on, and basically it means anything that appears on this desktop cannot be seen or, more importantly, manipulated from the "normal" desktop. Thus any input on dialogs in the secure desktop must come from the user. At least that's the idea.
Incidentally, Remote Desktop can manipulate the secure desktop (I guess it'd have to be able to). And it conveniently breaks VNC (IIRC it disconnects if a UAC prompt pops up and you can't reconnect until you take care of the prompt locally.
I used two ext2 drivers for Windows under Vista or 7. They run in the kernel as filesystem drivers and thus do not need to present UAC dialogs. Only for the control panels where you change the drive letter mounts... but those don't need to run on startup.
UAC is supposed to limit the damage caused by running malware... for example, it would be unable to write to system folders or Program Files, it would be unable to set itself to start up globally (only for the specific user, unless there is already a global start up item that points to an EXE it can write to, outside of the system files), and it would be unable to write to HKLM or install or manipulate services or drivers.
Of course in the default configuration UAC can be easily disabled by the malware easily allowing all these things, like on XP.
You can interact with UAC prompts remotely with Remote Desktop.
You can also deactivate the "secure desktop" if you're finding its more trouble than its worth (just be sure you understand the risks in doing so). Google around for the Group Policy setting (for "expensive" Vistas) or the direct registry hack (for every Vista).
Did you know your car runs on explosions? What could possibly go wrong? :P
Or do you ride a bike to work?
Actually in the Stargate universe currently (end of Season 5) the humans of Earth have multiple ZPMs. Spoilers ahead if you haven't seen the last episode of Season 5 yet.
.
.
.
Two were taken back to the Milky Way after the Replicators occupying Atlantis back in Season 3 were destroyed. One of those was put aboard the Odyssey to help give them a chance against the Ori. It's never again mentioned but it's likely still there. In addition I find it interesting that at the time of the last Atlantis episode the Odyssey is on a super-duper top-secret mission... maybe that's the next SG-1 movie? Though I thought they were gonna spice up the SG-1 pilot for that, but I can take an original picture instead. :)
The other ZPM was used to power the Ancient drone chair on earth. The chair was destroyed but the ZPM was not mentioned. I guess the writers are free to either write it off as being destroyed or having the SGC/IOA use it somewhere else.
Three are currently powering Atlantis.
So five in total.
Have you used it recently? That hasn't worked for me in months. I assume some change to GMail broke it a while ago and it hasn't been fixed.
Even if the RIAA somehow gains access to your directory listings?
Depending on how it's implemented on the Windows/Linux desktop, you might be able to create and mount a TrueCrypt volume on it.
Yeah I was thinking this. A digital cert on a file is meant to help ensure the file has not been modified (usually to help spot a viral infection).
Although the cert expiring shouldn't keep it from running, I'm guessing that's a built-in mechanism in the game... for like you said, to prevent cheating. Though a cheater who can hex edit the game can probably also disable the cert check.
You probably should update this backup whenever a) Steam or one of its games has an update or b) you purchase a new game on Steam. If you don't do it for a), the out of date blob file might force it to need to connect to the Internet to update the file. If you don't do it for b) you won't be able to access your new game because the blob file doesn't include your purchase data for that game.
You do realize the disc copies require Steam too, right?
In any event I have had similar problems with Steam but fortunately they only happen occasionally, and I prefer to blame my ISP who is the true source of the problem anyways. Valve has since fixed the Offline but (but I haven't been bothered to check).
I seem to remember reading something about their king taking it all in good stride
You read that on CNN, didn't you?
Except your car comes with all the features, it's just that they disable the ones you didn't pay for, and call the cops on you if you get them working by yourself.
(The Vista/7 DVD has the same content for all versions, your product key controls which version is installed. Thus if you choose to skip key entry at install time, it has to ask you which version you want to install.)
My beta says July 1st (run winver).
Stupid spell check. Stupid me for not checking spell check. *certainly
Ah, but the fact that only N% of their user base opted to install the extension is a statistic in and of itself and would be factored in to any conclusions.
Make the Firefox app folder user-writable, certainty that would be all that's needed?
I had to turn off SQM, it was causing Windows Installer to crash on Windows 7 when I tried to install UpdateStar. Didn't even get far enough to log anything, but thankfully Process Monitor helped me figure it out.
So apparently the Service Quality Monitoring is degrading the service quality, and then monitoring it. I don't think that's very useful, personally.
Try and figure out though how it is being "slow"... is it CPU or disk activity or memory or what? Identify what is wrong with Task Manager and you will be much closer to fixing it.
If its coming from random processes... injecteD DLLs live in all processes and thus bugs in them can appear in any random process since the DLL is present in all of them. My personal example is WindowBlinds, which has had some compatibility problems... Visual Studio soared in CPU usage while idle, the last time I used it. A while ago there was a problem where Google Desktop would eat up memory until it crashed if Windowblinds was in use on the system. Use autoruns to check for such DLLs and disable any that belong to apps you don't use, and temporarily disable apps that you are using (such as Windowblinds).
The disk check idea earlier in the page is a good idea too.
As for ideas it might be automatic defragmenting, I looked into the way defragmenting works on NT a while ago to try and figure out if having files open is still a no-no when defragmenting a drive (it's not, the clusters can still be moved, yay) and I found out Vista's defragmenting task is low-priority process and IO... meaning it can't be the cause, as it will defer to anything else on the system that needs process or IO time. You wouldn't notice it running.
FYI DiskMon and FileMon have been superseded by ProcMon. I used it the other day because there were pinned items on my Start Menu I couldn't delete, so a simple filter for RegWriteValue when I pinned or unpinned something and I was able to find where the list lived and wiped it.
Actually in Vista (and XP SP3, or is it 2?) Autorun by default shows a dialog asking you what you want to do with the software, it doesn't run anything on the device/CD unless you explicitly select that option.
Yeah someone ported the rock level, it plays pretty much the same. :) No upgraded visuals though.
I'll help.
It's called Cross-site scripting. Except in this case I don't think XSS exactly describes the type of attack we see here.