Reliability Tools
The Reliability and Performance monitor includes monitoring tools, and system reports on almost every aspect of your PC and Windows itself. The reliability monitor keeps track of all your system failures and software installations and presents them on a rather nice timeline graph. A Reliability Index is also featured, that changes over time as you encounter system crashes. This is where unsigned drivers normally fall foul, and it just hardens the fact that signed WHQL (windows hardware quality lab) drivers are very important now.
Vista is now extremely reliant on signed drivers and digital signatures. Microsoft has made it extremely important that all driver vendors now submit 32 and 64bit versions for certification. In addition to this, Microsoft won’t certify 32bit drivers unless they are accompanied by a 64bit version too – this will help Vista x64 get off the ground very rapidly. Every driver must be submitted for WHQL tests in order to obtain a certification. This will initially annoy a lot of driver vendors at this early stage because it’s a time consuming process and every new Windows Vista user is searching for device drivers to get their hardware functioning.
Should a signed driver crash, it is reported back to Microsoft who will then pick up the crash data, analyse it and possibly revoke the certificate until the vendor sorts the driver out. In Vista x64, all kernel mode device drivers must be WHQL signed by default.
Two types of drivers now exist in Vista. User mode drivers, and Kernel mode drivers. User mode drivers are low level drivers such as those utilised by USB peripherals, cameras and storage devices to name a few. These drivers should be able to install themselves without having to reboot the OS. Should a user mode driver suddenly crash, it won’t take the system down with it because it’s being run through a separate layer away from the OS kernel. Instead it can just restart itself without any issues
The Vista Kernel is now designed in such a way that graphics drivers are kept well away from it, which means driver failures should not cause a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). Should a driver crash, your screen should go black for a few seconds while Vista restarts the graphics sub-system. This is a well known Linux feature that keeps the OS extremely stable. I have seen this feature in action and it works very well.
User Access Control (UAC)
The most noticeable and irritating security measure from the user’s point of view is the introduction of User Account Control (UAC). Most Windows XP users tend to run their OS with default administrator privileges giving them full control over their OS. While running the system in such a way it doesn’t increase the likelihood of attacks from hackers, but it does mean that some programs can exploit your privileges and mess with your hard drive or even tinker with the OS itself.
Let’s look at two user types in XP for a second. There’s the Administrator who has almost full control over the OS and can basically initiate anything to alter their system. Then there’s the standard user who is well below an Admin and can perform basic functions, but cannot install or uninstall applications to name but one limitation.
Everyone is a standard user in Vista - even the administrator who runs with standard user privileges. Tasks that require administrative privileges are blocked. If the current user has administrative privileges, then they are given the option of temporarily elevating themselves to administrator status for the length of the operation. Now if the user doesn’t have administrator privileges then you have to supply a valid admin user/password at the prompt to continue. So basically at any such time should you wish to make a change to Vista that could be potentially harmful to the OS, Vista will dim the entire desktop, and block all access to running applications until the UAC dialogue box is dismissed. Programs that require administrative privileges to run have their icons marked with a small windows shield.
The UAC dialogue box runs in its own separate terminal session, which means that other applications running in the background have no access to the UAC dialogue box and therefore cannot auto-dismiss the box by any means. So to quickly recap, UAC will stop any rogue programs from touching any administrator level functions of your OS, unless you grant it permission via the UAC dialogue box.