The “P” in PC is for Personal. The UAC is just too intrusive for this person. I use anti-virus software and scan my PC when I’m done for the day. Don’t hamper my day with needless mouse clicks.

Control Panel / User Accounts describes me as “Administrator” but doesn’t give me Administrator rights. When I click Account Type / Administrator button the Change option is greyed out. What is going on here?

In Windows 8.1 (and likely others) I found out that in the regular command line (cmd.exe) with administrative rights, with the UAC on, a user XYZ on the local system which is a member of built-in “Administrators” group, when trying to access (list, read, etc.) a file or folder which has set permissions that allow full control for the “Administrators” group, apparently does not have those permissions to do so (trying to access those files in the GUI results in a pop up requiring user to make few clicks in the Security tab to allow access).
After disabling UAC, access to file/folders managed by those NTFS permissions functions as expected.

After reading about UAC, I would prefer to leave it on at all times. Thanks for the educational presentation on this topic.

I disable that crud. I am the only one on my machine. I have antivirus and a malware program and I do not go surfing for crap.

Hi, running windows 10 on a HP 4gb PC,, everyday im prompted bu this annoying Lavasoft UAC to say YES or NO to allow this programme to make changes on my PC, and wheather i press Yess or NO it does this every day, im really fed up with this , and i am afraid to uninstall it,,can you help please..ted.

Saying that you should never turn it off is utterly wrong. You should never turn it off if you do not have control over your PC or Network or have a public Ip directly on your Client. The UAC was invented because people used their Administrator Account as their User Account and Windows tried to put another barrier between that – So UAC is a babysitter and should IMMEDIATELY get disabled by anyone who doesn’t want windows interfere with their decisions made on a computer.

Thanks for this informative and exhaustive article. The security impact of “Notify me only when programs/apps try to make changes to my computer” is especially interesting.

Windows should keep a UAC table on a per-program basis and allow users to turn on or off the UAC for a specific program, instead of lumping all applications into the same UAC.

I get the feeling that ninety-plus percent of the commenters don’t know what UAC is for, even after this fine article. This is an interesting quandary, actually. Anti-virus software is possibly the biggest drain on time that we face in our daily lives on a computer. It scans EVERY file ANY TIME that files is moved or activated. UAC, on the other hand, merely suggests that you take a moment and understand what you are doing each time you activate some program that has triggered it; most of which “shouldn’t”. However, the fact is that with UAC and some information, you are fifty times less likely to activate a program that would turn out to be the reason that you needed anti-virus, in the first place. You say you don’t go to sketchy websites? Have you seen most websites nowadays? They’re ALL sketchy! There’s crap coming up all over the place. Have you gone into your browser settings and turned off all the permissions that websites will potentially request? File access, microphone access, USB access, midi, serial port, c’mon! The potential for crap to get into your system is greater now than ever. And when it’s in there, if you have UAC fully engaged, you have a CHANCE of stopping it. And it is NOT easily bypassed. So far, that ONLY bypasses have been on admin accounts with UAC at the second notification level, which is horse$#it. On a Mac, you get the same thing; you wanna make changes you have to click the little lock thingy. The only thing on a Mac is that you were never TOLD it’s a nuisance. And on a Mac, the Mac doesn’t tell you what EXACTLY you are doing…hint: UAC does. It also color codes the notifications, giving you more info about the reputation of the software, or process, or whatever is triggering it. Linux does it too. But for some reason, when windows does it, it’s a big annoyance. Look, if you’re not an admin, you shouldn’t have rights to everything on the system…period. if you are, you can do ALMOST everything with a standard user account, if you have a password. And if you want to keep using an Admin account, you can do everything, but better off with UAC, and better off with a password, to keep your kids or spouse or CAT from doing something that you’ll spend weeks trying to reverse.

And just to round it all out; I was on one of those websites, you know the ones, like CNET or CNN or whatever it was, but something like that, loaded with ads and cr@p, and just reading, and out of NOWHERE I got a UAC prompt. I hadn’t even touched the computer for ten minutes! Maybe a virus, maybe some other thing. Maybe I had forgotten to block a permission. I don’t remember, the point is, without full tilt UAC that would have happened without my knowledge. UAC would have KNOWN about it and would have let it execute.

Is it really THAT hard to understand? Get a Mac or move to Linux, you’ll have more elevation prompts than you can shake a stick at, and those elevations will remain in effect for a longer period of time than on windows, enabling you (or any process seeking elevation) to do more damage. Whereas Windows says “Hey, fine, but let me know you’re really the right person to be running this.”