SYSK 248: I’m an administrator!!! Why do I get User Account Controls prompts all the time in Vista?

Are you getting a bit frustrated about not being able to do certain things that administrator should be able to do, like run ipconfig /release, and many other commands and tools, and being prompted left and right just so you can say “yes, go ahead and run the program I, administrator, asked you to run”?

 

Well, the reason is that by default, Vista has the following local policy enable: User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval mode. Translation: it runs all users, including administrators, as standard users.

 

You can, however, change this behavior. One way to do so is to open control panel => Administrative Tools => Local Security Policy and set the “User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval mode” policy to disabled.

 

IMPORTANT: Only disable it if you really must! Your system is more secure if you have it enabled. You can always choose “run as administrator” by using right mouse button click option…

 

NOTE: Changing this setting requires a system reboot.

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 28, 2006
  Typically, most users are only doing admin intensive stuff every once and a while. Would it have made more sense to be able to "promote" yourself for a period of time or for the duration of a log in session. When the period is over, or you reboot, the permissions defaults back to the lower permission level.