Reader Challenge February 2010

The February 2010 Reader Challenge

 
An IT director wrote to say he's happy that he replaced most of the Windows Vista workstations with Windows 7. He said he's especially happy about the way you can configure and tweak the User Account Control (UAC) settings in Windows 7. However, he wrote that the changes he made on several workstations didn't take. He can't find a common thread to account for the problem on these particular workstations. He logged on as an administrator, and he's confirmed that there are no policies enabled to prevent changes to the UAC.

There's a known cause for Windows 7 ignoring changes to the UAC. Do you know what it is?

The Answer

This occurs if you're not the only user logged on to the computer. Simultaneous logons using Fast User Switching can interfere with this function. When I wrote to suggest this "fix", I received a message confirming that the problem was indeed Fast User Switching, along with a rather heated argument against the Fast User Switching function.

February 2010 Reader Challenge Winner

Congratulations to Sylvia DiNardo of New York, the winner of our February 2010 Reader Challenge. She wins a copy of Running QuickBooks in Nonprofits (CPA911 Publishing), which she requested in order to help her son's sports league.