I’m more inclined to yell at the manufacturer for not signing the driver (as a side note, this driver WILL NOT INSTALL on X64 versions of Windows, as Vista X64 will not allow installation of unsigned drivers). That way you bypass the issue completely (scary dialog and all). When you become a bed-mate of Microsoft, you need to play by their rules (and pay your dues).

As much as the cancel default frustrates me as well (I’m a heavy keyboard user and have been nailed numerous times by the window-grabs-focus-and-cancel-is-default-and-gets-nailed-by-what-I’m-typing-to-another-window), having cancel as the default makes much more sense than OK. What if that was an “Application is trying to format your hard drive” prompt (ok pretty ridiculous, but it could have been a prompt for a disastrous system change)? I’d rather have to re-install an unsigned driver than have to recover from backup because I was typing into a chat window .

Laurence

An awesome followup. From what you said it does sound like there is still an opportunity to display more information about the drive and *not* focus that “No don’t install” box immediately on fire up.

As far as Grandma/Grandpa understanding, I don’t expect them too, but I surely expect “More details” to display details… not just a cookie cutter sentence.

My point being that given all the security issues you raised (thanks for posting the ref) there are still about 9 better ways to display/inform and prompt users for action on this, and in true MS fashion, they’ve picked the least helpful. Even as an educated user (well, let’s say ‘competent’) I am given no choice to learn more about the driver.

I don’t think that’s helpful.

I imagine you would have felt a similar way if you were at home trying to figure out “Why am I getting this prompt?”, no?

You can see that MS changes information presented in the UAC elevation prompts — Mark Russinovich covered this feature at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc138019.aspx

Check out how the details that are displayed in the popup window are dependant on the signature type of executable (about 1/2 way down the page). I quote:

“The elevation dialog shows the image’s icon, description, and publisher for digitally signed images, but only a generic icon, the file name, and “Unidentified Publisher” for unsigned images. This makes it harder for malware to mimic the appearance of legitimate software.”

Hence why your unsigned driver dialog doesn’t trust the information passed to it.

Laurence

That honestly never crossed my mind before until you just typed that… I think you are on to something, because a lot of this retardation is some of the most-complained about bugs that they just refuse to fix. Before Mac came out and gave them a run for their money, I can only imagine what Vista was going to be… maybe just a reskinned Windows ME, who knows