Auslogics Blog

If you are a Windows Vista user, then no doubt you know what User Account Control (UAC) is. Some people find this feature really annoying, forgetting that it’s there for a reason.

UAC automatically protects your system from potential security breeches by forcing users that are part of the local administrators group to behave as if they were regular users. Whenever a user who is a member of the local administrators group attempts to perform a task that requires administrative privileges, the operation gets halted and the user is prompted to acknowledge it before proceeding.

If the user is not a member of the local administrators group and tries to perform a task that requires such privileges, he is asked to enter valid administrative credentials. This means that unless this user is an administrator, he won’t be able to change anything on your computer, since in Vista standard users are prohibited from installing most programs, changing system settings and so on.

Clearly, User Account Control is a very useful feature, but if you are sure you don’t need it and it annoys you way too much, here is how you can disable it:

1. Go to Control Panel
2. Click on Add or remove user account under User Account and Family settings
3. Click on any user account
4. Under the user account click on Go to the main User Account page
5. Then click Change security settings under Make changes to your user account
6. Deselect Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer and click OK. You will have to reboot your computer for the changes to take effect.

If you change your mind and decide to switch UAC back on, just select the above checkbox and reboot.