User Account Control

[NIM]

User Account Control, or UAC for short. Yes, I know its a bad word to many, however, it really is your friend and will save your butt at some time or another. Part of the reason for the anger of some over UAC is its name, think about it, User Account Control...."CONTROL!!!! Why is MS wanting to control my computer?" In the beginning of Vista UAC was named User Account Protection (UAP), perhaps they should have left it named that way because the word 'Protection' is much more suitable then 'Control' when in reality the aim of UAC is to protect the user. Anyway, UAC is here for right now. Rumor has it that UAC will quietly go away beginning with SP1 for Vista, I don't know the accuracy of those rumors but in the mean time there are a few tips for living with UAC.

There are a few different ways to disable UAC;

1. The easy solution is through Control Panel. Type "UAC" into the search bar at the top of the screen and you'll be presented with a User Accounts GUI that allows you to turn UAC on and Off.

2. At the start menu type 'msconfig' and hit enter and a System Configuration editor will start up. Click on the tools tab and scroll down to the 'Disable' and 'Enable' entries for UAC.

3. You can also disable UAC by using registry entries (outlined in the Vista Tips and Tweaks section)

The above methods are a brute force approach, as they just turn it on or off without offering any control over the finer aspects of UAC. Right now your probably thinking "What finer aspects?"...Yes there are some finer aspects for UAC, or at least there is a way to get a more granular control over UAC so you can keep it enabled and still live with it.

There's a more subtle configuration choice that gives you some of the benefits of UAC without any of the prompting. You'll need to edit the local security policy to control this, do the following:

1. From the Start search bar type 'Local Security Policy'.

2. Accept the elevation prompt (if you get one).

3. From the snap-in select 'Security Settings' - 'Local Policy' - 'Security Options'.

4. Scroll down to the bottom, where you'll find nine different group policy settings for granular configuration of UAC.

Perhaps the best choice I can suggest for you here is to select and change the setting 'User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode' from 'Prompt for consent' to 'Elevate without prompting'.

Read the explanations on the second page of the property sheet for each policy setting before changing anything. Be careful here because you can mess something up and be locked out of your own computer.