If there was one thing among many that annoyed Windows Vista users it was the User Account Control. Constant warning messages asking for permission to continue many tasks was no joy to any user trying to even basic tasks on their PC. The tweaking channels were soon inundated with requests for tips on how to stop it nagging you every time you wanted to do something. Fortunately UAC has been improved quite a bit in Windows 7 so that it isn’t quite as annoying as it was in Vista. You can, as ever, tweak it more if you like.

To get started navigate to the Control Panel, User Accounts and Family Safety. Click User Accounts, then Change User Account Control settings. From the next screen move the slider to select the level of protection you want.

Ensure you have a backup or restore Point on your machine before making any changes. If you follow these instructions to the letter you should have no problems, but we can’t be held responsible if things go wrong.

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Here are the four levels, and what they mean:

Always notify on every system change. Works like Vista. A nannying prompt pops up whenever you make changes to your system.

Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer. This is the default setting Make a change while logged in as an Administrator and it stays quiet. When a program makes a change, a prompt appears to check what’s going on.

Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer, without using the Secure Desktop. This setting is identical to the default setting, with one difference: It won’t dim your desktop so that you only see the UAC prompt asking you to take action. This presents a slightly higher security risk over the default settings, as a program could allow another malicious program or code to interfere with the UAC prompt.

Never notify. UAC is turned off. This is an insecure option and not recommended for most users. However if you have a good firewall and anti-virus, you can turn it off if you like.

After you choose your level, click OK.

You can also disable UAC with a registry hack if you have the skills.

Open the registry editor (regedit) and find;

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

And find the entry EnableLUA, and modify the value to 0 (zero). The find the ConsentPromptBehaviourAdmin value and change that to 0 (zero) too.

The next time you restart your machine the UAC will be turned off and you will never be bugged by it again.

As always with Windows, there is a downside and that is that you can no longer use Windows Gadgets and MS think that the system is too open to attack with UAC off and gadgets running in the background. I personally never used the gadgets anyway…

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