User Account Control: Most Annoying Feature Ever?

Hello Tom,

Yes, UAC can be a pain if you do a lot that requires elevatation to run.

The whole purpose of UAC is to alert you for permission before any program is allowed to run elevated (run as administrator). When a program runs elevated, it will have full control and access to everything on your computer. You can just imagine the damage that could be done to your system if say malware was to run elevated in the background and you never got a UAC prompt to have a chance to deny permission and stop it from running in the first place. If you turn off UAC, then you will never have a chance to allow or deny anything that wants to run elevated on your system.

I repeat, yeah UAC can be a pain, but how long does it really take and how many times do you really have to click on Yes/No in a UAC prompt compared to having that sort of last line of security??

It's something that you should weigh carefully before just disabling.

For more details and information about UAC:

• How to Change UAC Notification Settings in Windows 7
• User Account Control Step-by-Step Guide
• Mark Russinovich on Windows 7 UAC - Windows Security Blog - The Windows Blog
• User Account Control: Inside Windows 7 User Account Control
• User Account Control - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hope this helps,
Shawn

I honestly don't run many applications at all which need to elevate. And then they do, it's 1 second and 1 click, no big deal. I leave UAC on. I've had a few instances where I am running something and then all of sudden, for no good reason, I get a prompt saying a program wants to elevate to admin. And that's where the annoyance becomes the feature, because I click no and try to figure out which program is trying to do something unwanted.

Edit: of course, I'm also a linux admin who is VERY used to running as a standard user and typing sudo command and providing a password for everything that needs administrative access. So, compared to this system, UAC isn't even a bother.

I'm with pparks1 on this : I've just got so used to it, and I understand the benefits as outlined by Brink.

The analogy of a Linux user is perfect - you usually don't run as ROOT, so UAC on Windows is akin to running as a STANDARD user requiring SUDO and a password.

I've learned to live with it. Yeah, it's annoying, and I really hated it at first, but a single click a couple times a day isn't all that big of a deal.
It's not as if it asks for every single program. CCleaner is the only one I notice on a regular basis.

I will say however, the idea of having a "whitelist" that can be modified would be nice. Only issue with that is something adding itself to the list without the user knowing.

In my opinion, the annoyance is worth it. Stop to think about something: Are we a little bit spoiled (and, yes, I’m including myself) when it comes to how many times we have to click our mouse? Actually, how many seconds, or fraction of a second, does it take to do an extra click or two? ??

I think every layer of protection you can get is good, especially in nowadays web environment. Suppose something sneaks onto your PC and you're unaware of that, the UAC may just warn you about that.

As Frank1 said, 1 or 2 seconds isn't going to make a big dent in your day. When I fix someones PC, I usually put FF on it with NoScript. Even though I explain the benefits of having this plug in, people tend not to like it because "it's an extra click or 2" to get something to go.

Yepperz, I think we are a little spoiled