Whoever is to blame, it doesn't change the fact that turning it off fixes those problems.

If a guy wanted to throw some garbage in your trash can, why would he need the keys of your house? ;)

This is treating a symptom, not the illness. You could also fix these problems by throwing your computer out a top floor window. It would never crash again (after the initial impact).

If you don't install GOGs to prog files (which does often require priviledge escalation), how often do you encounter it? I'd be curious to know which apps you have that are currently causing you such hassle. I run a full dev environment, Visual Studio, SQL server, a number of coding utlities and add-ons. I run most apps people would, and the only time I see a UAC prompt is when installing something.

When did you last try running with it on?

The only time it's ever on is when I've just re-installed Windows. So not very often and not for very long. Generally speaking, when you're trying to get a lot of things installed in rapid succession and you've got UAC stopping some things from installing properly then well, it just has to go. I have absolutely no problems leaving it off that could have been remedied by leaving it on. So why would I? I've been using Windows since 3.1. I don't need a nanny.

Fair enough, I just think you may be pleasanlty surprised if you start running with it on. I can see if you're installing loads of stuff then it's anoher set of things to click through, but surely that's an exception to the norm.

Why not try it? Report back to us after a week with UAC on how many times it bothered you. I'd be interested in the result. Think of it as a bit of investigative journalism, only with slightly more effort than goes into normal investigative journalism (pay private investigator, report results).

If I did what advantages could I expect to see? That's one of the real problems I have with it. It seems to exist to stop people doing dumb things and ultimately seems to result in dumb things being done (through poor programming of other apps or not, it amounts to the same thing to me).

Actually I was typing quickly and didn't clarify well. Initially I had to turn it off, meaning when Vista was brand new. Just before Windows 7 release the updates to Vista seemed to have fixed it, and I was able to leave it on. Again. I'm not sure if this was coincidental due to the programs I had installed, but just an observation.

You can never see security, only failure to secure. However I'm not interested for you to try it from your own perspective or benefit. More I would like you to conduct a real world experiment for me. I'd like to know what apps kick in that actually give you trouble. I suspect, and would like you to confirm, that if you switched it on right now, you'd not notice a problem. It doesn't take long to switch on (just go to security centre in control panel), you can abort any time, try running with it, see if it lives up to your expectations of hassle.

Yeah, but with an AV and firewall in place that's not really the case. In any case, I wasn't using "see" in a purely literal sense. I was asking about the benefits to me which don't seem to be something that could be perceived in any sense.

The benefit is user account control.

So what benefits do you perceive from your AV?

The ability to detect and remove most known types of malware.

No, you do not perceive ability. For all your knowledge your AV may in fact be a load of magic beans. What do you actually perceive?

EDIT: I'm using the wrong term. Replace "Perceive" with "See"

So AVs are all smoke and mirrors and UAC is guaranteed total security - is that where this is going?

I don't know. To me the tested detection rates and removal abilities of my AV seem adequate enough to me.