Disabling User Account Control in Windows 8

With the new User Interface of Windows 8, accessing simple panels and doing easy tasks can be a pain. This blog post is for one such simple task, which has changed from the previous versions.

User Account Control (UAC) is a security component that enables users to perform common tasks as non-administrators (called standard users in Windows Vista), and as administrators without having to switch users, log off, or use Run As. But sometimes it becomes a hassle to keep waiting for the prompt at times for an elevation of the user rights to be able to proceed ahead.

Some companies go ahead and manage these by disabling it. Doing this in Windows 7 was simple enough. Go to Run, or the Start Menu and start searching for “Change User Account Settings”. In Windows 8 as well, the idea is the same, which takes just 2 simple steps:

1. Go to the Search Charm and type “Change User Account Settings”:

2. In the console, change the settings as per your requirement. If you want to disable it, you can keep it at “Never notify”:

Hit OK and you are OK to go.

You can even change the following registry key to disable UAC:

Location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

Key: EbableLUA

Value data: 0

Hope this helps. Until next time about a new feature of Windows 8.