So UAC is basically a big “Do you want to allow this?” annoyance that I imagine gets ignored a lot. I just spent 30 minutes on a vista machine and I’m sure I clicked ‘GO GO GO’ over 30 times at least.
An app that we used modifies the hosts file based on what environment you want to live in, and vista doesn’t think that should happen. Nor does it let you change permissions by default. Whatever
1) go to \windows\system32\drivers and right click, properties on ‘etc’
2) uhm, I think it was advanced, but go to advanced or something.
3) go to the owner tab and change ownership. You’ll want MACHINE\ADMINISTRATORS
4) ok out of everything and come back into properties.
5) edit permissions (there are extra clicks everywhere compared to XP)
6) give everyone modify access
7) ok out of everything and come back into properties.
8) make sure read only is unchecked and apply / ok.
Note that readonly unchecking wasn’t working for me originally until I gave EVERYONE modify instead of just administrators. I think this was because trustedinstall or system or something was trying to do the permission change and was silently failing.
1) Start -> Run -> %WINDIR%\system32\drivers
2) Right click ‘etc’ and choose properties
3) Click the Security tab
4) Click the Advanced button
5) Click the owner tab.
6) Click “Administrators” under “Change Owner to:”
7) Check “Replace owner on subcontainers and objects”
8) Click OK.
9) Click OK again.
10) Repeat steps 2 and 3
11) Choose “Users” under “Group or user names”
12) Under “Permissions for users” put a check box in the “Modify” row under the “Allow” column.
13) Choose “Administrators” under “Group or user names”
14) Under “Permissions for users” put a check box in the “Modify” row under the “Allow” column.
15) Click OK.
If you prefer you can disable UAC: http://www.petri.co.il/disable_uac_in_windows_vista.htm