One of the things that has bothered me with regard to UAC are programs I can't start up without approving them. For the longest time it has only been one. I use a Dell- scanner/copier/printer that needs to run some software at startup to allow me to scan directly to my PC. Every time it started up I needed to give it permission to run. It wasn't a big deal because I didn't reboot my machine that often. All that changed this weekend.
This weekend I installed a SSD HD and put my programs and OS on it. I have had lots of issues that required rebooting the machine. When things were going well, I could reboot quite rapidly. I must have rebooted the PC 50 times in the last 24 hours. Not only has the Dell UAC prompt been driving me nuts, but now Samsung Magician (SSD software) has been driving me nuts too. The classic solution for this is to put the startup entries in as startup scheduled tasks. I will not get into why that didn't work, but it didn't on this Windows 8.1 setup. As I was looking through various threads where people had the same problem, I stumbled on this solution.
Run SECPOL.MSC
Local Policies
Security Options
3rd from the bottom on my machine- UAC- run all admin in admin approval mode change to disabled
Bingo. No more annoying UAC prompts at startup. Is it dangerous? I'd like to hear some opinions. My feeling is that when I make myself an administrator, I'd like to be treated like an administrator at least when it comes to running programs. UAC has never saved me from anything anyway. Yes it might give me pause if some unfamiliar executable were to be launched without my knowledge, but give me a break. I remove malware from a lot of computers almost daily. Not once have I seen a UAC prompt stop any of it from running. Nuf said. Enjoy at your own risk.
EDIT: discovered that this turns off UAC completely for the account. No good. Sorry about that.
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