Earlier this year, I reviewed a tiny utility called TweakUAC. What it did was simple – it turned off all the annoying UAC (User Account Control) prompts for administrators without disabling UAC completely.
Why would anyone want to do this? Firstly, it makes sure that users without administrative privileges still gets UAC prompts. Moreover, some of the other features offered by UAC like applications being executed without admin rights (by default) or Internet Explorer running in sandbox mode will also be retained.
In my original post, Erik suggested that I try out another similar app called UAC Controller Tool. It does pretty much the same thing as TweakUAC. You can turn off your UAC entirely or switch to quiet mode and suppress the annoying UAC prompts. Another additional option offered by UAC Controller Tool is something called “friendly mode”. In friendly mode, you will be notified only when a process tries to make changes to your computer and your desktop won’t be dimmed.
Once again, UAC Controller Tool doesn’t do much that you couldn’t already do with a bit of tinkering. But, it’s nice to have a simple, no-fuss, portable, and one click utility to do the needful.
Download UAC Controller Tool (134 KB)
Cost: Freeware
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Operating System: Windows 7
The point is to smack developers in the back of the head, and make them not actually require administrative access. There’s almost no reason that you actually do. Once the software ecosystem as a whole makes administrative access rare, then the user will be presented with a UAC prompt very rarely.