How To Turn On/Off User Account Control Notifications In Windows 7

User Account Control is a feature introduced in Windows Vista, and carried over to Windows 7. Whenever Windows 7 sees any changes being made to your Computer, such as installation of programs, running unknown exe files, and so on, it will notify you and at the same time require administrative permission to carry on with the changes.

UAC is very useful as it protects your PC against malicious programs and viruses. However sometimes you wish you could turn off the irritating nag screens. You can disable UAC completely, though this is not really recommended.

Here is how you can turn off UAC in Windows 7:

1. Open Control Panel –> User Accounts and Family Safety –> User Accounts.

2. Click on ‘Change User Account Control settings’ under the ‘Make changes to your user account’ section.

3. In the ‘User Account Control Settings’ window, you can completely turn it off by moving the slider to ‘Never Notify’ at the bottom.

The default setting for UAC is the 2nd position on the slider – ‘Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer’. You can also set it to ‘Always notify’ if you are very worried about security.

You can also temporarily turn off UAC and enable it back again when you are installing trusted programs.

In case you do not want to be bothered with the above steps, UAC Controller, a free utility,  lets you enable or disable UAC in a single click.