Temporarily Disable Vista’s UAC without Restarting your PC
User Account Control (UAC) is a frustration for many new Vista users, yet hardly anyone actually wants to disable it because of the added security it offers. I’m one of those people who isn’t quite fond of the current state that UAC sits in, but I still like to have it enabled for the added protection that it brings to my computer.
I’ve previously covered a way to remove some of the headaches UAC has, and I think I’ve now found another way that should satisfy most users. Most of the time when you continuously receive a UAC prompt it is because you’re doing some file reorganizing or installing a few applications. I’m sure the thought of disabling UAC for the time being crosses your mind, but then it quickly fades as you decide that you don’t want to restart your computer.
What if you could temporarily disable the UAC prompt without needing to restart your computer? You actually can with a program called TweakUAC. It is a really small (and free) application that you just have to download and run. You don’t have to install it, but each time it runs you’ll need to give it Administrator privileges via a UAC prompt. After that you’ll be shown a small window with three different options to choose from:
Obviously the first option to "Turn UAC off now" is the same as completely disabling UAC in the Control Panel, but the second option is what I want to point out. It makes the UAC operate in a "quiet mode" which will suppress all elevated prompts only for administrators. This is essentially another way of disabling UAC, except it is better because it doesn’t require you to restart your computer!
After switching into the quiet mode, Vista will notify you in the System Tray that UAC has been disabled. Just go about your business doing what you need to do, and when you get done just re-enable UAC. All of that is done without ever restarting your computer.
Of course, your computer is susceptible to an attack during that time since UAC is essentially disabled, so you might want to be careful with what you do. I normally use this tool when I decide to clean up my Program Files folder on the computer, which often has files and folders that were never deleted after uninstalling an application. Using TweakUAC speeds up the process of deleting those folders.
Visit the TweakUAC Homepage for more information and the download link
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Tags: Freeware, Software, Apple, Downloads, Microsoft, Screenshots, Windows Vista
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Ryan,
first of all, thank you for mentioning our tool TweakUAC, I’m glad you’ve found it of use.
I would like, however, to argue a bit about your statement that when the quiet mode of UAC is on, you wrote that “… your computer is susceptible to an attack during that time since UAC is essentially disabled.”
As a matter of fact, the quiet mode of UAC does not disable UAC, it leaves the UAC protection in full effect. That is, the applicatins keep running with the limited access rights to the system, the protected mode of Internet Explorer is still in effect, the virtualization of the old applications is still taking place, and so on. The only things missing are those “elevation prompts”, but they do not protect the system from malware, they are there to protect from the user himself only. (This is discussed in detail at our web site http://www.tweak-uac.com)
I hope this clarifies the issue in some way.
Thanks again,
Andrei Belogortsef
http://www.tweak-uac.com
I see what you’re saying, but the UAC protection isn’t really in full effect when using the quiet mode. Anything could be run on my system without my authorization, and could modify system files or program files to expose information that I would otherwise want to be protected.
Yeah, Internet Explorer is still running in Protected Mode, but for the people who are not using Internet Explorer that doesn’t really help. Putting UAC in quiet mode is just the same as disabling it in my opinion.
Thanks for the great app though.
I just discovered this from a magazine, very glad of it - until now I’ve had UAC disabled full-time, as it’s about as much protection as a cardboard fortress and I don’t like being asked to confirm every time I rename a file or delete something. Using this I don’t have to confirm that I want to press the spacebar, and don’t have to close the “What? You TURNED OFF UAC?” thing that appears in my taskbar every time I start Windows.