A few niggling Vista problems

[d032sh]

Hello,

Not a Vista bashing thread, just a couple of issues which annoy me slightly and I was wondering if anybody had any suggestions.

1) When I uninstall something it will regularly leave a dead shortcut on the start menu. This is because I like to move links about and it's not a problem as I just manually remove it. So I right click on the shortcut and it takes a full minute of spinny blue wheel icon and disk thrashing and 'ooh I wonder where this program is' before it'll open up the right-click context window and let me select 'Delete'. This annoys me.

2) Again in the start menu, running as Administrator with UAC disabled. I cannot delete any directories which contain subdirectories, I get an 'Access Denied' window. So if I have a few sub-directories then I have to start at the bottom of the tree and remove each one before I can delete the top level. This also annoys me.

That's about it. Many thanks for any suggestions.

[Splash]

With regards to 1) - have you turne off Indexing by any chance? I just tried on my box and it took all of around 0.7 seconds of the spinny blue wheel before I was offered the option to delete. (Note the time was approximate, but it was pretty quick)

As for 2) - first re-enable UAC. Set it to Silent Mode using TweakUAC by all means, but don't just disable one of the best things the OS has going for it. With UAC enabled you will see why this is - the Start Menu lives at c:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\ and is a protected location. Try deleting a directory in there (and I just created a directory tree to test this) and then delete it - you should receive a UAC prompt, and if you grant that permission it... just works.

[this_is_gav]

1) Will perhaps be searching for locations for the missing file, perhaps including the network in some situations. I've uploaded a registry file while you can run to disable the tracking. Also included is a .reg file to reenable it if you need to. disable_tracking_of_missing_shortcut_links.zip. You'll probably need to restart the PC after applying the change.

2) No idea. It does allow you normally, whether UAC is enabled or not (other than for the Administrative Tools, which usually won't delete with UAC enabled). Try as Splash said. On a sidenote, you may or may not know that it's usually better to put UAC into Quiet Mode rather than disabling it completely. That way you get that extra layer of security without the annoying popups. You can use TweakUAC to do that easily.

[d032sh]

Two very intelligent well thought out responses. I really do love this forum.

Many thanks to you both.

[Splash]

Did you manage to fix it out of interest?

[hypnoticstate]

The UAC is safe but man does it annoy me sometimes. It's usually the cause of many installation problems for me.