What is UAC?
User Account Control (UAC) is a technology introduced with Microsoft’s Windows Vista which aims to improve the security of the OS by limiting application software to standard user privileges until an administrator authorizes an increase in usage rights. In this way, only applications that the user trusts receive rights from him to perform advanced system related functions and other malicious software don’t have the necessary rights to compromise or harm the operating system. In other words, a user account may have administrator privileges assigned to it, but applications that the user runs do not also have those privileges unless they are approved earlier or the user explicitly assigns higher privileges to them.
When is UAC triggered?
UAC is generally triggered in the event of
- Changes to system settings
- Installing Applications / Device drivers / Active X controls
- Changes to Windows Firewall settings
- Changes to UAC settings
- Windows Update configuration
- Adding or removing or changing User accounts
- Configuring Parental Controls
Why disable UAC?
In addition to enhancing the security, UAC (User Account Control) also can get a little annoying sometimes. Normal users don’t like being prompted for confirmation everytime they try to run a key system process or perform administrative tasks even at the slight risk of decreased security. Also whenever a UAC prompt is triggered, the Vista Aero interface is disabled and the Secure Desktop Mode is activated, which can lead to random crashes in some cases. Even though most of the UAC bugs have been done away with in Vista Service Pack 1, you may still want to disable UAC.
How to Disable UAC?
There are many ways to disable UAC, you can do so through MSCONFIG (Windows System Configuration) , GPEDIT (Group Policy Editor), REGEDIT (Registry Editor) or the plain simple way – through Control Panel. We will show you the 2 most easiest ways to do so.
Control Panel
1. Open Control Panel, navigate to User account settings, select the user account to make changes to, and click ‘Change Security Settings’.
2. In the User Account Control window, just deselect the Use User Account Control to help protect your computer and click ‘OK’. Restart your computer to let the changes take effect.
MSCONFIG
1. Open the Start menu, and Run ‘MSCONFIG’ to open the Windows System Configuration window.
2. Go to the ‘Tools’ tab and select the ‘Disable UAP – Disable User Account Protection’ option and click ‘Launch’.
3. Restart your computer to apply the changes.
Note: Disabling UAC on your computer can be unsafe especially if you are directly connected to the internet.
To re enable UAC just go through the same procedure as given above and select Enable UAC / UAP.