What is the Windows 7 UAC and how does it effect me?

In the early days of computing, security was just an afterthought. In those days, computers were only used by a certain amount of people. You could pretty much keep tabs on everyone that had access to your system. A lot of these traditions were passed down to later systems when users started having access to their own PC’s in their living rooms. The Microsoft Windows family of operating systems has been particularly hit hard by security issues over the years. With the release of Windows Vista they decided to go a different route and try to securely fortify their OS. They implemented the UAC controls on the newly minted operating system. Unfortunately the way that they designed the OS was sloppy and created a lot of complaints from users. This was probably the biggest complaint that the very much maligned Windows Vista system had. In the new version of Windows, titled Windows 7, Microsoft has decided to smooth out the rough edges and what they have come up with is a lot better.

Before we go on, we should probably educate the readers that don’t know what exactly the UAC is. UAC stands for User Account Control. The user account control allows people to grant or deny authority to programs that are trying to change the system settings. In the past, once a program was executed, no matter the user level, the program would commence to installing and changing settings on your computer. Now when there is anything done on the computer that might disrupt or damage the system as it currently is at that time, a pop up will show up and ask you are you giving the program permission to do that. The UAC will only allow certain changes unless the administrator is logged on. This is especially good for malware programs that attempt to install on your system without your knowledge. If they try to change a setting then the system will alert you.

Overall the UAC was a good ideal but in Windows Vista it was badly implemented. The problem was that people only had two settings for the UAC, on and off. If the program was on, it would send people a load of pop ups for almost every single change that they would make. As you can imagine this grew to be very annoying. So some people would turn the UAC pop ups off and then they would have no protection at all. In Windows 7, this problem for the most part has been solved. The UAC now offers you four different settings on how you would like to be alerted. This allows you to be able to decide the amount of protection that you might need. If you are an experienced user then a lot of hand holding can be a real turn off to a system.

As it turned out, Microsoft was on the right path when they implemented the User Access Control system but their set up left a lot to be desired. Now in Windows 7, you have the choice on how much protection that you might need and now users of all levels can be happy.