Hello,
Windows Vista is not telling you what to do or keeping you from doing
anything, even though it can seem that way at times.
1) The prompts that ask for your permission (from yourself) are not there to
annoy or check up on you, or to make sure you know what you are doing; they
are there only so the system knows that you are the one doing those things,
as oposed to some malicious program. That's the only reason, but it's
important.
2) In Windows Vista, programs that want unrestricted access to your computer
must ask you for permission. Programs designed for Vista will do this
automatically; however, older programs will NOT, and you have to manually
give such programs permission by right-clicking on them and clicking Run As
Administrator.
I imagine this is what you experienced with your patch program; it was
attempting to modify something in program files, and in order to do this, it
needed your permission to have unrestricted access to your computer, but it
did not ask for it, so it failed.
These types of things should happen less and less as time goes on.
--
- JB
Microsoft MVP - Windows Shell/User
Windows Vista Support Faq
http://www.jimmah.com/vista/