Iâve tried living with user access control in Windows Vista, but Iâve decided itâs more annoyance than itâs worth. I know what Iâm doing, and did just fine in Windows XP without UAC. So how do I turn UAC off?
UAC is a good thing. Really.
Yes, on occasion it does ask for confirmation where âin the old daysâ Windows XP would not have. But one of the times it asks for confirmation is when malware strikes ⊠exactly the time when you want to be able to say, âNO!â. Perhaps like you, though, Iâve never been in a situation where Iâve wished I could have said no. Like you said, I know what Iâm doing.
So letâs turn off UAC.
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Start by firing up Control Panel and clicking on User Accounts:
Even though it seems redundant, click the resulting User Accounts again:
Finally, click on the link Turn User Account Control on or off:
Naturally, since User Account Control is on youâll have to confirm that you intend to do this.
Now, uncheck Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer:
Press OK and restart your computer for the changes to take effect.
But wait. Thereâs more!
Before you even rebooted, you probably saw this:
Double click that and youâll get the Security Center dialog that includes this:
Thatâs the Security Center warning you about the (apparently) horrible, awful thing youâve just done. (In case the irony isnât clear: itâs not horrible, itâs not awful, if you know what youâre doing.)
However off to the left in that same dialog youâll see a link Change the way Security Center alerts me. Click that to get this choice:
You know what I clicked on: Donât notify me and donât display the icon (not recommended). Yes, even though itâs ânot recommendedâ.
UAC is now off.
Letâs review the implications of what weâve just done.
UAC alerts you whenever an application is about to do something that requires âadministrativeâ access to your machine. On Vista, even logged in as an administrator, youâre not really running as administrator. Only when an operation requires âelevationâ to actual administrator status to perform its task will that happen. With UAC off, that elevation happens without question and without notification.
Pretty much like it did in Windows XP if you were logged in as an administrator.
The risk is pretty much the same as it was then: malware could take advantage of your naturally elevated privileges and gain access to things it shouldnât. UAC prevents that, or at least notifies you when itâs about to happen.
By turning off UAC youâre disabling that feature.
I hope you know what youâre doing.
Allowing everything admin access isnât the only bad thing that turning off UAC will do.
For example. File & Registry Virtualization is only active when UAC is turned on, so user settings and configuration files may be installed to a different place (a system directory rather than a user-specific directory) if UAC is switched off than they would be otherwise. This wonât affect you if you turn if off immediately you first install Vista and keep it off forever, but if youâve had UAC on for a while and now turn it off, you may well run into problems when programs file calls to the âprogram filesâ folder arenât redirected to your userspace.
Also note that Internet Explorer 7âs âProtected Modeâ, whereby the browser runs in a sandbox with lower privileges than the standard user, relies on UAC; and wonât work if UAC is disabled.
Basically, keep UAC on if at all possible. Unless you REALLY know what youâre doing (and donât use internet explorer).
By the time a malware hits I will be numb with just clicking permissions for spyware, firewall, and UAC without even attempting to read the cryptic messages. I shut off UAC. Have shut off spyware in past.Just paid for Sunbelt. May have to find another solution (router or ?). Even if I could see these permissions they are unintelligible to me.
The great thing about Microsoft is that they have enough walls and enough things to throw them at that something eventually sticks. Hopefully theyâll take the advice of some of the more vocal columnists and write off Vista as Windows ME 2.0, and shoot out something a heck of a lot better to replace it⊠soon.
Ok, so i tired turning off the UAC and every time i click the button i get nothing. Canât access User Accounts and Iâm running under Administrator with no password. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Did you turn it off with nlite? If so I had a problem when I turned it back on after not installing it with a clean Vista install. Anything that normally be questioned by UAC wouldnât work anymore. Only fix I found was reinstalling Vista without UAC and never trying to turn UAC it on again.
Thanks for the help. Trying to set up some medical diagnosis software for a palm pilot and even as administrator I still get an elevation request. Iâll probably turn UAC back on after I install the sw.
I turned off UAC because there were some Windows updates that needed to be run and kept failing for months so i got the idea to turn off UAC to see if that would help. The updates ran and executed perfectly. When I turned the UAC back on, I couldnât save my asp or html files in Notepad.exe as there was a message saying that I didnât have authorization to save files. I always was able to save in Notepad before I turned off UAC so why canât I save files now? I just turned UAC off again and it is still off and I save files again. Microsoft, donât do me any favors by trying to make computers safe as i liked them the way they were before you added all these headaches.