UAC in windows vista is a way to protected windows operating system by preventing unauthorized changes to your system. This created lots of criticism and the feature which was built to make Vista secure became the most hated feature amongst users. In Windows 7, Microsoft has given options for the users to select their ‘comfort level’ in UAC notifications and also improved the user interface by providing more relevant and additional information.
Personally,in some respects, the “comfort level ” in UAC notifications is equal to Personal Firewall. When any applications want to modify or change the system configurations or settings such as changing the IE home page, modify the Registry, setting some services to “automatic”, and so on, even when the application will send a message to the Internet, the User Account Control will prompt to the users.
As a result, when the administrator was not used to the function, he had better take other security measures instead of turning off the UAC, for example, start the Personal Firewall which can do some of the core protection, although it couldn’t do all UAC could do. Of course, it was unnecessary to use the UAC control as promoting the Windows 7operating system, when the enterprise has deployed the personal Firewall. On the contrary, it will annoy users and arouse considerable complaints.
So, the system administrators just choose one of the two solutions, either UAC or Personal Firewall, according to the users’ and their own OS.
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My Reviews about UAC in Windows 7 (Part 2)
三 Turn off the UAC
But some users of Win7 would like to use the window control strategy, rather than the new and advanced security technology of Windows 7 called User Account Control. What should they do with the UAC, either give up Win7 or choose some other OS? My answer is there is no need to choose other operating systems; just one simple operation could make it. The system admin just turned the level to the fourth, that is to say, turned off the UAC, which make the OS Win7 the same like the previous edition ones that didn’t have UAC.
Like Windows XP, Win7 that had turned off UAC would never notify the system administrator if there is any change in system configuration. For example, when the user as an administrator access to the Operating System, any changes in OS by the application won’t automatically notify the administrator, and will become directly applicable.


Overall, the UAC experience is much improved in Windows 7 than in Windows Vista. The number of clicks (by default) is drastically reduced in Windows 7 when compared to Windows Vista. The ultimate goal of the UAC is to provide user the control over what changes can happen to the system and not to annoy users with more number of prompts.
However,if some malicious programs inserted into and system, would secretly change system settings or configurations such as webpage, the registry etc. When the users with a general or common account accessed to the OS, any changes that the users have no relevant authority to do have would meet with a refusal, such as the installation and upgrade of the application, the changes in the system configuration, and so on. Unless the user sent an oral notice to the admin to adjust the authority, the users could not do those changes.
It should be noted that only when the system administrator must restart the computer, the adjustment that the admin changed the high level to the fourth would come into force.
When UAC was turned off, kinds of applications would cause damage to the OS. Because the application could access to and modify the protected areas, the private data and so on, that is to say, the application had the same privilege as the admin. Besides, some malicious programs could also secretly do communication and data transmission with other computers on networks, even the hosts on the Internet, which would attack and damage the OS.
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