Disabling User Account Control
User Account Control is generally an annoyance to most users. While you can definitely feel more confident that nothing is happening that you don’t know about, it can be tiring to be notified so often. Many people I speak with simply want to turn it off. I’m sympathetic. Just the other day I decided to organize the shortcuts in my start menu and was forced to confirm each move twice. Moving shortcuts was a very easy operation as I could simply click and drag and drop them right inside the start menu (note you cannot drag a shortcut on top of another, but you must choose to drop it just above or below another shortcut in the list). Twice per shortcut move? Yes.
The first dialog: “Destination Folder Access Denied”, “You’ll need to provide administrator permission to move this file” (I click “Continue”)
The second dialog: “User Account Control”, “Windows needs your permission to continue.” “If you started this action, continue.” (I click “Continue”)
Moving several such items around and having to answer twice really made me wish I could turn it off temporarily. You might expect to find this option in the system or security control panel applets, but you’ll actually find it under “User Accounts”.
Control Panel > User Accounts > Turn User Account Control On or Off
Here you can go against the Microsoft recommended setting and uncheck this setting to stop all these pop-ups. Doing so will naturally require another “Continue” click from the very feature you are looking to disable. Unfortunate is the need to restart the system in order for the change to take affect. While I’m sure this is an intentional inconvenience to thwart the automated disabling of the feature, it is disappointing to those of use that just want to turn it off while we perform operations we know will result in lots of prompts. As it stands, I’m leaving it on for now. I’m curious if anyone out there is just turning it off for good?
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Comments
The first thing I did! Annoying as hell! You can't do anything without that thing popping up. This feature is for people who just started using a PC and are completely ignorant.They 're safe with this-they won't change anything! Not even display resolytion!
--UAC disabled forever---
Posted by: Chris | March 25, 2007 3:32 AM
Terrible option. Off for good! I hope.
Posted by: Wade | March 31, 2007 3:03 PM
I agree fully...UAC is just a major annoyance to anyone adept in using their computer withouth handholding. I've disabled it and yet only in working my my parents' new PC this weekend did I discover something new: When, with UAC disabled, I attempt to delete a non-empty folder (AS SHOULD FULLY BE POSSIBLE!!) in Vista, I am denied that privilege. This is even on folders where I have taken ownership recursively through all files/subfolders and have full control over them. However I found that with UAC enabled on my parents' PC, I did not have this issue and could fully delete any folder once I'd OK'ed all those watchdog dialogs.
I like Vista but hate its over-watchfulness and also all the redesign of the system folder architecture with so many folders falling under Trusted Installer access or whatever. I've since replicated an ownership change and permissions change throughout my system drive so that all folders have Administrator as the owner, with full privileges. It is irritating that this change itself still finds me denied access to some areas and also that junctions only further aggravate the situation.
Now I'm also facing a new problem where dragging a URL from the Address Bar of IE7 to the Vista desktop fails to create a valid URL shortcut. Meanwhile, doing so from Firefox works just fine.
I keep asking myself if I want to return to XP...very tempting and easily done, as I'm configured for dual boot.
Posted by: Daryl | July 8, 2007 8:21 PM
Daryl,
We early adopters pay the price. I'm more happy than I am annoyed, but I'm sure the experience and threshold for tolerance is different for everyone. Hang in there man!
Bob
Posted by: Bob Kelly | July 9, 2007 2:14 PM