Windows Vista has the built-in ability to automatically reduce the potential of security breeches in the system. It does that by automatically enabling a feature called User Account Control (or UAC for short). The UAC forces users that are part of the local administrators group to run like they were regular users with no administrative privileges.

Although UAC clearly improves the security on Windows Vista, under some scenarios you might want to disable it, for example when giving demos in front of an audience (demos that are not security related, for example). Some home users might be tempted to disable UAC because of the additional mouse clicking it brings into their system, however I urge them not to immediately do so, and try to get used to it instead.

 

Anyway, if required, you can disable UAC by use the following method:

1. Open Control Panel

2. Under User Account and Family settings click on the "Add or remove user account"

 

3. Click on one of the user accounts, for example you can use the Guest account

 

 

4. Under the user account click on the "Go to the main User Account page" link.

 

 

5. Under "Make changes to your user account" click on the "Change security settings" link.

 

 

6. In the "Turn on User Account Control (UAC) to make your computer more secure" click to unselect the "Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer". Click on the Ok button.

 

 

7. You will be prompted to reboot your computer. Do so when ready.

In order to re-enable UAC just select the above checkbox and reboot.