First Boot - The Essential Tweaks

11. Turn off User Account Control (UAC)

User Account Control (UAC) is definitely the most maligned, misunderstood and most often mocked new 'feature' of Windows Vista. What is it? You know those little yes/no boxes that pop up when you try to run an installation program, or view device manager or anything else that Vista interprets as an 'administrator' level event? That's UAC.

What it does is attempt to prevent unauthorized changes to the Windows system settings by requiring a manual 'ok' from you, for each and every change. What it also tends to do is annoy people, especially since the popup window does not always appear in the foreground, leaving you to wonder why your installation has frozen.

Fortunately, UAC can be easily disabled, though you should be aware that doing so strips Vista of a considerable extra layer of security against viruses and malware. Effectively, disabling UAC brings us back to XP territory in terms of security, but it makes Vista so much easier to use. If you are a computer novice, you should consider leaving UAC enabled for the time being. For the rest of you, to disable UAC in Windows Vista:

Go to start/control panel/user accounts and family safety/user accounts.

Click on 'turn user account control on or off' and select 'continue' when the UAC box appears.

Uncheck the 'use user account control (UAC) to help protect your computer' option.

Click 'ok'. Vista will require a restart, and following that you will be free of UAC nag windows.

Note that this disables UAC only for the current user.

12. Set Automatic Updates to download only

By default, Windows Vista will automatically download and install any patches and updates that Microsoft considers crucial. This will often result in an automatic operating system restart, which can be canceled if you are at the keyboard, but it can play havoc with your torrent downloading if you are not.

A better way to do things is to have Vista download the patches automatically, but wait for your permission to install them and restart the computer.

To enable manual update installation:

Go to 'start/control panel/security/turn automatic updating on or off'

Select the 'download updates but let me choose whether to install them' option.

Click 'OK'

Windows Vista will now notify you when updates are available via an icon in the taskbar, but will not install them until told to. When you do choose to install the patches, you'll have the opportunity of scanning over the patches and deselecting any you feel are unnecessary.