User Account Control is one of those Windows features that many people don’t understand. Many are just annoyed that you keep getting pop-up dialogs asking for permission to do things like install apps, change settings, etc. Etc. Etc. A lot of people even turn off UAC so they don’t need to was to worry about it.
First of all, you should read the excellent guide written by How to Geek on why disabling UAC in Windows 7 is not a good idea. Now their article usually says that you shouldn’t disable UAC, and I totally agree with that opinion.
However, Windows 10 has undergone major changes in the way UAC works, and it is now designed to keep your computer secure, even if you “disable†UAC. I’ll explain how it works in this article.
First, let’s look at what UAC does. I won’t go into details as you can read the above article for more details. Usually, when you log in as an administrator, the applications running on your computer do not have administrator rights like your account.
Instead, there is something called the level of integrity. The highest level of integrity means that the application will have full administrator access. A medium integrity process will have the same access as a standard limited user account.
On Windows 7 / Vista, disabling UAC is actually not a good idea, because all processes are then run with the highest level of integrity, which means that if you catch any malware while using IE, it will have full administrator access to your system like IE does.
However, this all changes in Windows 10. On Windows 10, you can’t even turn off UAC without hacking into the registry or changing Group Policy.
In Windows 7, if you go to Control Panel, click on User Accounts and then click on Change User Account Control Settings, you can completely drag the bar down to Never Notify.
You can also navigate to this same dialog by following the same path in Windows 10. Here’s the difference: In Windows 7, UAC is actually completely disabled. In Windows 10, UAC is not disabled, you just don’t get notifications.
To be precise, UAC continues to run, and all administrator elevation requests are automatically approved, while all elevation requests from standard users are automatically denied. So how can you actually turn off UAC?
First, the reason Microsoft has done this is because Windows 10 has a new security feature for Universal Store apps called AppContainer that really restricts which areas of the operating system an app can read and write. When you actually disable UAC in Windows 10, you won’t be able to launch any apps from the Windows Store! Yes, you heard right!
If you disable UAC in Windows 10, you won’t be able to run Windows Store (Universal Apps) apps. Instead, you get a nice dialog box that says “This app won’t open. The application does not open while User Account Control is turned off. ”
So with this in mind, how do you disable UAC in Windows 10? The easiest and best way is to edit your local security policy. You can do this by clicking Start and typing secpol.msc. Expand Local Policies and click Security Options.
Scroll down to User Account Control: Run All Administrators in Admin Approval Mode. It should be enabled by default. If you want to disable UAC, double-click it and select Disabled.
If you are unable to edit your local security policy, you can also change the value in the registry (click Start and type regedit).
You need to go to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Policies System
Find the EnableLUA key and change the value to 0, which disables UAC. Once you make this change, you will see a message from Action Center telling you to restart to disable UAC.
Thus, permanently disabling UAC in Windows 10 is also a bad idea. However, moving the slider all the way down to Never notify is actually not as bad as it used to be. Now, instead of actually disabling UAC, you will receive fewer requests and all processes will run at the appropriate integrity level based on the original request.
This means you no longer need to worry about the elevated process on Windows 10! Only by disabling UAC using the methods described above will you get the same effect as disabling UAC in Windows 7, where all processes run with the highest level of integrity.
So how does an application perform with the highest level of integrity in Windows 10 without disabling UAC? In fact, it must ask for permission in code, which means that many programs will not work with Windows 10 unless they rewrite the code to ask for permission correctly.
Finally, remember that no matter what you read on the Internet, moving the slider to Never notify in Windows 10 will not disable UAC. Second, moving the slider all the way down is not as dangerous as it used to be in Windows 7 and Vista.
If you really don’t need these prompts, this is the best option to keep your system secure. Finally, if you really want to disable UAC in Windows 10, use the methods above, but remember that you won’t be able to launch any Windows Store apps.
If you have any questions about UAC in Windows 10, please leave your comment here and I will try to help. Enjoy!
–