Sycraft
So I contact FXPansion to let them know and see what is up. Their response? "You need to disable UAC." No. I don't. That is NOT an acceptable solution in 2014. UAC is a useful security feature, it is well documented, and it prevents -nothing- for software that escalates privilege. Everything written properly works fine with UAC.
 ...
 Fix your code, don't tell users to make their systems less secure.
 
/rant

Sycraft,
I agree with you 100% - I've never had to disable UAC on any of my PC's.
While I do have some disagreements with certain Microsoft concepts & implementations - its not with the UAC and protected folders.
 
 
It's not hard for a developer to create apps that work properly with the UAC.
There's a number of things that you can do to work with it or work around it.
The bottom line is that as a developer you just have to give enough of a damn to do it right and not treat the PC as a 2nd class platform.  And this sometimes is a problem for developers who create on the Mac and then port their creations to the PC.
 
(and now one of my favorite rants)
As an end-user you can minimize these kind of problems with either old or badly written VSTs by not storing them under a protected system folder like \Program Files
Really, you're not going to screw anything up by storing them someplace else - just make sure the new location is listed among the VST scan paths. Plus it makes it a lot easy to back up, restore or upgrade them.
 
...Steven

So, I whine about it online. I mean that's what we do about our problems these days right? Whine about them online :).

Of course we do and I'm not saying you shouldn't whine about it on line, I just thought the fx forum was a more appropriate place to be whining as you might have go some help with someone who'd had the same  problem but then I thought you were still having problems which it seems you're not ?
 
For me the new licence manager has been brilliant compared to the old one, it got all my passwords from the site and registered and updated all my products in one go which is a huge improvement on the old one.
 
I was confused, you say you've found a work around, what was the work around and does the licence manager work as it should now ?
 
I don't think UAC is an excellent security layer at all and I always disable it as a matter of course as I hate being asked if I'm sure I want to do this that or the other. I notice that a lot of the audio tweak sites are still suggesting turning off UAC too.
 
Steve
 
 

Any modern operating system has something similar to the UAC in place.
It's purpose is to insure that if something is being installed that can affect root level settings, services, etc. that it is YOU who is doing the installing and not some nifty new little piece of malware that you picked up because you mistyped the url to your favorite website and landed on the wrong page.
 
Audio software that has to have the UAC disabled to run is similar to having a gardener who can't mow your lawn without having total access your home.

twaddleI don't think UAC is an excellent security layer at all and I always disable it as a matter of course as I hate being asked if I'm sure I want to do this that or the other. I notice that a lot of the audio tweak sites are still suggesting turning off UAC too.

 
It's a pretty decent one. It isn't useful like in and of itself, but as part of defense in depth, which is the only real kind of security. What it prevents is something like malware breaking in via an insecure user mode app like Java or your browser or something and then embedding itself in the system. It would have to request escalation, which hopefully you'd deny. If it can't get that, then it can only infect your user profile, which makes it much easier to remove (you can remove the profile, if nothing else).
 
It is just one of a bunch of layers of defense like a virus scanner, firewall, ASLR, driver signing, and so on that help keep you safe. Yes it does require you to make decisions, but then security does require a user to be proactive.
 
In terms of audio tweak sites, the problem is that most of them don't really understand or test their tweaks. That is true of a lot of the tweak stuff for anything out there. Things become "magic spells" that people don't understand, but some guy did one time and it worked so people keep doing them, without understanding why.

Well, my security gripe is online services that require you to use numbers and punctuation in your password. Talk about your perpetuated myth, stuff "people keep doing without understanding why".

Also, as it turns out, disabling UAC does does nothing. I decided to try it since I'm having all hell removing a BFD Expansion I put on and don't want around anymore, and the license manager is supposed to do that. It doesn't change any of the errors the software has. What it conflicts with I don't know. That's part of the problem with DRM, when they try and do tricky things, sometimes it backfires.