A Complete Guide for Tweaking User Account Control (UAC) in Windows Vista and Later

Microsoft has added a new feature “User Account Control (UAC)” in Windows Vista which is a good addition. It prevents malicious programs to install in your system as well as it also prevents basic users to accidentally change system critical settings which can be harmful to the system.

Although its a good feature but sometimes it becomes annoying to experienced users who know what they are doing with their system. You can disable UAC completely from Control Panel -> User Accounts. But I’ll not advise you to disable it but you can tweak it to decrease the no. of prompts.

You can tweak UAC using “Local Security Policy“. Following is a step by step guide with all customizable settings:

1. Type “secpol.msc” in RUN dialog box and press Enter. It’ll open Local Security Policy.

2. Now go to “Local Policies -> Security Options“. In right-side pane, scroll down to last and you’ll see following options related to UAC:

You can change them according to your requirements. Like you can enable “Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode” to remove those annoying prompts if you are using administrator account. You can disable “User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation” to disable the screen fluctuation when the UAC prompts appear.

3. If you are a Home Basic or Home Premium version user and want to tweak UAC (User Account Control) settings using secpol.msc, then you’ll be out of luck cause secpol.msc is a part of Group Policy Editor and its not included in Home editions of Windows OS.

But don’t worry, the same settings can be applied using Windows Registry Editor, so you can also enjoy the UAC tweaks in Home editions using registry editor:

Registry Tweaks to Customize User Account Control (UAC) Options in Windows Vista and Later