And prevent prompts from showing up on the device

Jan 11, 2019 13:32 GMT  ·  By

User Account Control is a security Windows feature that debuted in Windows Vista and which helps block any unauthorized changes to your system.

In other words, it can help limit the damage a malware infection could have on your system, especially if it requires elevated privileges on the computer.

Whenever this happens, UAC displays a prompt to let you know that a certain process attempts to launch with administrator rights, so it’s critical for users to always keep an eye on these prompts and block anything that looks suspicious.

In the last few weeks, however, I’ve seen many people saying they disable UAC because they can protect their Windows devices themselves. Others asked how to do this in the latest Windows 10 versions.

Before anything, let me tell you one thing: I recommend against disabling UAC in Windows because a simple malware infection can do much more damage on the computer if it gets elevated privileges by default.

By default, you work on the device as a standard user, and when administrator rights are required, you see that UAC prompt. By manually granting access, you make sure that you are the one seeking elevated privileges and not a malicious process that reached your device.

With this in mind, disabling UAC in Windows 10 is as simple as it is on the other OS versions. And it only takes a few clicks.

Setting up UAC in Windows 10

First and foremost, what you have to do, obviously from an administrator account, is to click the Start menu and type msconfig.exe. Then open the Tools tab, and select the option called:

Change UAC Settings Click the Launch button in the lower part of the screen to access the configuration settings.

As a shortcut, you can just click the Start menu and then type Change User Account Control Settings and you are going to reach the same configuration options as before.

The UI you see here allow you to configure different level of UAC, and by default, Windows 10 is configured to notify you when apps try to make changes to the computer. However, you aren’t notified when you, the system administrator, make changes to Windows settings.

If you go in full panic mode, you can drag the slider to the top option and set it to always notify you when changes are made to the device, no matter who makes them.

Dragging the slider to the bottom disables its completely and no longer displays any notifications when changes are made. Click OK and you’re done here.

Setting up UAC in Windows 10

Additionally, you can also configure User Account Control from the Group Policy Editor on Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise. To do this, click the Start menu, type gpedit.msc, and launch the Group Policy Editor. Navigate to this path:

Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Security Options On the right side of the screen, there are several options that let you configure this feature, but one that is particularly useful is called: User Account Control: Detect application installations and prompt for elevation This particular policy allows you to configure UAC to never alert you when an application is trying to install and requires elevated privileges. Microsoft explains about the disabled state:

“Application installation packages are not detected and prompted for elevation. Enterprises that are running standard user desktops and use delegated installation technologies such as Group Policy Software Installation or Systems Management Server (SMS) should disable this policy setting. In this case, installer detection is unnecessary.”

Changing UAC settings does not require a system reboot and all tweaks are applied immediately. You can always restore the default configuration using the same steps detailed above.

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