Windows 8 or 8.1 uac question

Hello,

I am getting a new system in a few days and I have a question.

My old system was Vista Home Premium 64bit and I had disabled UAC as it was nothing but problems. But my new system is Windows 8 or 8.1 Home Premium 64 bit and i would like to get some advice.

Should I keep UAC enabled on the new system or should I disable it like I did in with Vista?

I run good protection software and am decent with computers, but I can't really find much about if user disable UAC or not in Windows 8 or 8.1.
I install lots of software and games and I want less headaches than I have/had with vista. I have already started the process of contacting the software companies to see if I can run their software on two system or if there are any special uninstall process's I need. But right now my biggest thoughts are if I should disable Windows UAC on new system.

Any advice or thoughts would be greatly appreciated, as i have little to no windows 8 knowledge.

Thanks in advance
Gren

 

Hey JoeRay12,

Ok I read the article you posted in the link but I am still no further ahead.

I vista it was 100% better to have UAC off, but I still don't know about Windows 8 or 8.1, so what do most users do?

I have some knowledge of computers and run decent protection software such as MalwareBytes and Kaspersky Pure3. Plus with new software I always use Sandboxie first just to be sure on Vista.

So When I get my system later this week or early next week, what do you suggest? Which setting level would be the best, but without all the issues vista UAC had?

Please let me know.
Thanks in advance
Gren

 

I run Win 8.1 on my system and am not thrilled about the inability to disable UAC in 8.1. I've tried to run Revo Uninstaller in Hunter mode and UAC won't allow me to drag a desktop icon to the "Radar target" to uninstall an app. It also won't allow me to stream internet radio stations in Winamp which I paid for years ago.

 

UAC can be turned off by setting slider to never notify.

 

I've done that. It silences but does not disable UAC in Win 8.1. I have the same problems with Revo and Winamp I had in Vista until I turned UAC off in Vista. I've looked for methods to turn UAC off in Win 8.1 and MS isn't allowing UAC to be completely disabled in Win 8.1.

 

I think you are dealing more with incompatibilities than UAC not being turned off.

Tell me how to reproduce it so I can try it.

 

UAC cannot be completely turned off in Windows 8.1. Have a look at this article. It might be a workaround.

http://techzend.com/disable-user-account-control-windows-81/

BTW Has anybody looked at this.:confused

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=289346

 

secpol mostly sets registry keys, so you can do it via regedit.

 

I've personally have not run into any issues with UAC turned on. I have it on at work and at home. Both running windows 8.1.

Though, in certain flavors of linux you also have a "UAC" variant that requires you to type in a password to confirm. Hope Microsoft does not decide to go in that direction.

Or just add the following in the registry:

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\EnableLUA
Value: 0
Type: DWORD

Or via powershell:

New-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system -Name EnableLUA -PropertyType DWord -Value 0 -Force

Requires a reboot.

How to get into powershell. Click start, type in power, then click powershell. Or, hold down the windows key, plus r, type in cmd (press enter).

type in powershell (press enter).

 

This did the trick for me. I can run Revo Uninstaller in Hunter Mode and can stream Internet Radio in Winamp once again. :major

Of course, M$ wasn't going to tell the "general public" about this. rolleyes

 

I'm not a fan of turning off UAC, but, I'm happy that the fix I posted helped you.

Either delete the key, or change the dword to 1 to reset it to yes.

1 = yes (on)
0 = no (off)

 

Microsoft made it quite clear on how to do this, they just don't publish it to consumer areas of the web and for good reason: it breaks functions in the OS.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd835564(WS.10).aspx

The fact remains however: the issues are due to incompatibilities in the software. Decently coded software does not stop working due to UAC.

 

Gren, maybe you have the new machine already, but I think you'll find UAC is handled much better now than it was in Vista. On Vista machines I routinely get double confirmations. Once I got four. At least in 7 and 8 you are only asked once. I routinely shut down UAC when I am doing a lot of installations or updates. But then I enable it again.