How To (Really) Completely Disable UAC on Windows 7

One of the best feature changes in Windows 7 is the greatly improved User Account Control system, with a slider to easily control how much the security feature annoys you. But what if you want to really disable UAC entirely?

Unfortunately, there’s no way to completely disable UAC from the user interface—sure, you can drag the slider all the way down to make sure you never see a notification, but UAC is still running behind the scenes, so you have to continue to “Run as Administrator” for any system tool you use.

The other problem is that some software just doesn’t work properly with User Account Control enabled, especially ancient software that you should probably update anyway.

Big Fat Important Note:

Changing UAC security settings is not a good thing, and you shouldn’t do it. These settings are designed to keep you more secure, and prevent the horrible security problems that plagued Windows XP and previous versions.

That said, if you want to put things back to the way Windows XP did it, this is the only way.

Disable UAC With a Registry Hack

Since the only way to completely disable UAC in all versions of Windows 7 is a registry hack, you’ll need to head to the start menu search box and type in regedit.exe and browse down to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

Over on the right-hand side, you should see a setting for EnableLUA, which you’ll want to customize as follows:

•UAC Enabled: 1
•UAC Disabled: 0


You’ll need to reboot for the setting to take effect, whether enabling or disabling.


Disable UAC the Easy Way with a Downloadable Registry Hack File

Just download, extract, and double-click on the included ReallyDisableUAC-Win7.reg file to disable UAC. You’ll need to reboot for the setting to actually take effect.

There’s also an included registry hack file to re-enable it as well.

Download ReallyDisableUAC-Win7 Registry Hack File

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