How to change Vista User Account Control (UAC) settings ?

User Account Control (UAC) is a Windows Vista/2008 security feature, prompting users for access to applications and tasks that require administrative priviledges.

This security feature, even if somewhat hardening system security, can often become a nuisance by constantly prompting local administrative users to run applications with elevated priviledges.

Below are different methods to turn off or reconfigure UAC behavior:

To turn off UAC completely (not recommended):
1. Click the Windows Start button > Control Panel
2. In Control Panel, click User Accounts.
3. In the User accounts tasks window, click "Turn User Account Control on or off.
4. Clear the "Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer" check box, and click OK.
5. Restart to apply the change.

Instead of turning off UAC, it can be reconfigured from the Local Security Policy console:

To Disable Admin Approval mode:
1. Click the Windows Start button, in the search dialog type: secpol.msc
2. In the Local Security Policy window, navigate to: Local Policies > Security Options
3. Scroll down to: "User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode"
4. Select the Disabled option, then click OK.
5. Close the Local Security Settings window.

Note: This method will still prompt for credentials when installing applications.


To change the elavation prompt for administrators
1. Click the Windows Start button, in the search dialog type: secpol.msc
2. In the Local Security Policy window, navigate to: Local Policies > Security Options
3. Scroll down to: "User Account Control: Behavior to the elevation prompt for administrators"
4. Select one of the following settings:
- Elevate without prompting (to run tasks requesting elevation automatically)
- Prompt for credentials (to as for user name and password input for tasks requesting elevation)
- Propmt for consent (default for administrators)
5. Click OK and close the Local Security Settings window.

Note: There is a setting in the Local Security Policy window for "User Account Control: Behavior to the elevation prompt for standard users" which can be set to either deny or prompt elevation requests for standard users, it does not provide for skipping the prompt for standard users.