is it bad to turn off user account control?

This is a bit off-topic, but it pertains to Windows 7 UAC and user accounts, and I haven't been able to find an answer anywhere else to what seems like a basic question, so I'm hoping someone here can help me:

I have Windows 7 and I use Ableton Live 7, which doesn't officially support Windows 7 but will run fine IF UAC is turned off. Therefore, I created a separate user profile for Ableton use (both of my user profiles have Admin privileges).

I disabled UAC for my Ableton user profile, but this also turned UAC off for my regular user profile, which, for reasons already stated on this thread, I don't want to do.

My question is: Is it possible to set UAC at one level for one user profile, and turn it off entirely for another?

AbletonUser said:

I have Windows 7 and I use Ableton Live 7, which doesn't officially support Windows 7 but will run fine IF UAC is turned off. Therefore, I created a separate user profile for Ableton use (both of my user profiles have Admin privileges).

Does Ableton Live 7 work when run elevated?

"Does Ableton Live 7 work when run elevated?"

Not sure what you mean by "run elevated." When UAC is set to anything but "off," Ableton Live 7 will run, but it's very laggy, the audio is patchy, and the program crashes easily.

The solution (for me) was to turn UAC completely off, change the properties of Ableton to run in Vista Service Pack 2 mode, and to disable "multicore support" in Ableton preferences. It works fine now (but I'm still worried about turning UAC off...guess I'll just have to be careful about what sites I visit/programs I install).

AbletonUser said:

Not sure what you mean by "run elevated."

Turn on UAC. In properties of Ableton's .exe in Windows Explorer, check "Run this program as an administrator".

Tepid said:

You know. One of the things that people complained about the most was how Not Secure XP was.
Then they (MS) implement something that actually does make the OS more secure, and be more like linux in how is handles the way applications run, and people turn it off. It's not a smart move.

No, UAC should not be turned off
Yes, you should run as a user and not as an admin

Turning off UAC and running as admin are just not a smart thing to do.
Regardless of how safe you think you are when running Your system, blah blah blah.

It's just my opinion, yeah, but it's the right one.

Amen to that ! Give this man 10 bonus points.

I might add that one purpose of the UAC warning message is to alert the user if a program is unexpectedly activated. For example, if you have been chugging along editing a Word document for an hour and suddenly, out of the blue, a message pops up asking you whether some program or other may start then you should want to know what that program is. It might, for example, be malware which was programmed to activate itself at a given time.

If you don't give a hoot about the security of your system then turn UAC off. If you do care then leave it on. It's as simple as that.

Paddy

Also it's invaluable when you've lost your glasses.:)

Would anyone like to run a sample of the rogue Security Tool to test UAC at the highest setting and or a LUA/Standard User account?

The rogue exe is fairly well known by most AV/AMs now but it's not about testing detections it's about seeing how UAC/Limited/Standard user accounts handle it.

Of course if your not geared up for testing then DON'T!!!

hxxp://rapidshare.com/files/403216229/Security_Tool.zip