Shut-Up and Smile

The other day I was working with a virtual machine image running Windows Vista and I wanted to see if NewSID would work. Well it didn't. In asking around, I got a tip from an old friend, Michael Kaplan—try running elevated.

So, I did. I re-ran it as the 'real' Administrator and guess what, it worked. It seems I was bitten by something that will bite many of us as Vista adoption grows: User Account Control (UAC). The problem was even though I was running as a local Administrator (a member of the local Administrators group), I wasn't the über-Admin. When an application runs that needs certain administrative privileges you should get a UAC dialog. NewSID however doesn't provide a manifest telling Vista it needs higher privileges so it just ran and failed.

If you have trouble with a program on Vista, a quick way to see if it's a UAC problem is to right-click on the item and choose the Run Elevated option from the context menu.

End of line.