{"id":27433,"date":"2007-03-30T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-30T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2007\/03\/30\/what-do-the-colors-in-the-elevation-dialog-mean\/"},"modified":"2007-03-30T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-30T10:00:00","slug":"what-do-the-colors-in-the-elevation-dialog-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20070330-00\/?p=27433","title":{"rendered":"What do the colors in the elevation dialog mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Windows Vista with User Account Control<\/a> enabled, when you right-click a program and select Run as Administrator<\/i>, the elevation prompt contains a particular snippet of warning text and a corresponding color-coding. Here are what the four colors mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Windows needs your permission to continue<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\nA blue-green banner indicates that the program is a Windows operating system component. Remain calm<\/i>.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
A program needs your permission to continue<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\nA gray banner indicates that the program has been signed but is not part of Windows. Be cautious<\/i>.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
An unidentified program wants access to your computer<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\nA yellow banner indicates that the program’s identity cannot be digitally confirmed. Be suspicious<\/i>.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
This program has been blocked<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\nA red banner indicates that the program has been blocked from running. Run away<\/i>.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

You can learn about the philosophy behind UAC in this Channel9 interview<\/a>.\n Pre-emptive snarky comment<\/b>: “UAC sucks!”\n The purpose of this entry is not to discuss whether UAC is a good idea or not. I’m just trying to help by providing information on what the colors mean. This is one of the entries that I was afraid to write. On its own, it’s useful information, but I anticipate a torrent of nasty comments from people who see it as an opportunity to start flaming. I have other tips and stories related to controversial topics; this is a trial balloon entry. If I get a bad experience from this entry, I’ll delete the others. Just like how I deleted all my stories about Bob<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Update: Okay, just to make it clear (since I’m told that people don’t read other comments before posting their own). I did not work on UAC. If you ask me a question about its design or how it works, the answer will be “I don’t know.” That’s why I included a link to a talk from the people who actually know something about it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Windows Vista with User Account Control enabled, when you right-click a program and select Run as Administrator, the elevation prompt contains a particular snippet of warning text and a corresponding color-coding. Here are what the four colors mean. Windows needs your permission to continue A blue-green banner indicates that the program is a Windows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[104],"class_list":["post-27433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-tipssupport"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

On Windows Vista with User Account Control enabled, when you right-click a program and select Run as Administrator, the elevation prompt contains a particular snippet of warning text and a corresponding color-coding. Here are what the four colors mean. Windows needs your permission to continue A blue-green banner indicates that the program is a Windows […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}