A Smartass Education

Ok, so Windows Vista. It’s pretty slick. However in trying to protect stupid users from their own shadows, they went a bit far.

Vista has a few things that are VERY annoying. 1 of them is called User Access Control (or UAC). It doesn’t give administrators administrative rights until they click on a prompt to get it. Fine, I’ll deal…. It’s only one time right? Nope…. It’s every bloody time you ever open an installation etc…

So first to Eliminate UAC
Click Windows Key + R (to open run menu) -> type msconfig -> Click Tools -> Highlight Disable UAC -> Click Launch

Stop Windows Defender
before you exist msconfig click over to startup tab and uncheck Windows Defender, then click on services tab, sort by name and uncheck windows defender there as well….

Disable DEP (Data Execution Protection)
Click Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> RIGHT CLICK Command Prompt -> Click Run as Administrator -> (Click Allow if it asks you..) -> at the command prompt type: bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff

Remove Security Center Notifications
Control Panel -> Double Click Security Center -> Click Change the way Security Center alerts me -> Select I do not want notification messages from Security Center. (note… only do this, don’t disable the service because when I did, i had tons of odd problems with shutdown and startup)

Make network icon animated
Right click icon -> Click Turn on activity animation

Ok, after you restart virtually all the annoying prompts are disabled. Things that are still annoying but I haven’t yet figured out how to fix, if you know how to then please post a comment and I will update the post:

uTorrent port forwarding
Ok, I figured this out, but it took me a couple hours of annoying trial and error. For some reason in Vista uTorrent ignores whatever port you choose a different range without asking. After trying to force all sorts of ways to get it to my port I caved in and set it to theirs. I will only give brief descriptions since if you are using uTorrent I assume you have a clue.

1) Hardset your ip to a local address (192.168.0.2 or something) and Open uTorrent and start downloading something

2) Press Win Key + R (run) -> type cmd -> type netstat -an -> look for the ports that people are connecting to. For me it was from 62300 – 63400. I don’t know if this range was chosen at random or if this is what yours will be as well.

3) Go into your router and tell your router to open tcp ports from 62300 – 65000 (go over because it seems to keep going higher if you keep monitoring) and save

4) Go into uTorrent Preferences -> Click connections -> set port to 62300 (or whatever something in your range was)

5) Uncheck UPnP and randomize port if they are checked

6) Click advanced -> Highlight net.bind_ip -> type 192.168.0.2 (or whatever you hardset your local ip to) -> click set

7) Make sure your software firewall also has the range or the utorrent program allowed to pass…
WOOHOO! Problem Solved

Concurrent connections… Ok so if you use file sharing you want to have a ton of concurrent connections. XP limited you to 10 to “try to stop the rapid spreading of worms”, well Vista limits low end versions to 3 and high end versions to 10. This is obnoxious and won’t give you full performance when file sharing. For XP you can download a patch at: www.lvllord.de. For vista… not sure yet

So far this is all that has annoyed me. The rest of the system seems really solid and well put together, though I’m sure I will find more things in the future.
Article Author: The Smartass
Sources: Trial and Error
Last Updated: 12.25.06